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Gaming has never been more popular in the UK than it is right now. Many sources rank the country as the single largest European market for video games in 2023.
It is also the sixth biggest global market for gaming, with a steady increase in the numbers playing games over the past few years. That means gaming is big business and games companies are often floated very effectively on the stock markets.
A true success story then: but what are the main factors that are driving it?
Online Casino Interest
Online casinos are just one small part of the enormous gaming sector, but they are clearly a factor in its rise. The demand within the UK for digital casino gaming is huge and modern players have high expectations of these casinos The following criteria are hugely important for online casinos:
· Game selection
A casino must provide everything from the latest slot titles to live video blackjack, poker, and roulette to thrive.
· Good payouts
With fierce competition within the market, only casinos with the best payouts achieve popularity. A best payout casino is one that has high returns for the player. This is expressed as a percentage and represents the average payout a player can expect when playing a game.
· Security and service
Players look for sites with SSL data encryption software to ensure their personal data is safe and customer service that is speedy and efficient.
Improvements in Technology
A second key factor in the growth of the UK gaming market is technology. Advancements in it have made all types of games better quality than ever before. Every genre of game now has graphics with greater depth and visual sophistication than those of the past. That has increased the appeal of the games.
As the central processors and graphics processing chips in gaming devices have become better, playing games has become a smoother experience. Gamers have less worry about issues such as lagging when they play these days.
This was a major problem in games where fast reactions and decision-making were needed for success, such as casino games or first-person shooters. Technology getting better has removed some of the main obstacles to the popularity of those games.
The Emergence of Competitive Gaming
The emergence of gaming as a competitive activity, otherwise known as eSports, has been another factor driving the success of the online gaming market. The UK has been one of the first markets to embrace eSports with real enthusiasm and that is helping to grow its popularity with online gamers and external partners.
Top UK eSports competitors such as Quicky Baby and Zerkaa are enormously popular streamers, with millions of watch hours and hundreds of thousands of subscribers to their gaming channels. Growth is being driven both by those who enter the competitions and people in the UK who choose to watch them in live streams of the big eSports events.
Many of them then go on to play the games more often in the hopes of following their heroes and becoming full-time professional gamers in the future.
Mobile Gaming
The ability to play games on mobile devices is easily one of the most significant factors driving the UK gaming market. Two years ago, that market was valued at $9 billion, which was a rise of 2% on that of the year before.
However, it is mobile gaming that accounts for the largest share of the market in the UK. Whereas 30% of UK gamers play using a console and 26% on a PC, the mobile gaming share of the British games sector is 56%.
Furthermore, the two most popular games are the mobile-friendly Wordle and Candy Crush Saga, with 1.8 million and 1.2 million players per day. Women are particularly keen on playing games using mobiles and the emergence of it as an option has broadened the demographic appeal of gaming in the UK. That makes it a really key factor in the overall growth of the market in recent years.
Having achieved a value of $7.8 billion by the end of last year, the UK online gaming market is predicted to grow by a further 5.4% during the next five years. That would take it to $11 billion by 2028.
From casino and eSports to things like role-playing fantasy games, people have more options than ever before. That is coupled with better technology and a choice of playing using a console, PC or mobile and all of these factors are combining to drive rapid gaming market growth.
