Global Online Sports Betting Market - Growth, Trends, COVID-19 Impact, and Forecasts (2021 - 2026)

Due to the increasing global popularity of both sports betting and football as a sport, the football segment of the global online sports betting market records a high betting volume, with a growing number of bets, especially from European countries such as Italy and Spain, where football enjoys high popularity. Nowadays the vast majority of football bets are placed online, attributed to the significant changes in the products and various betting markets that bookmakers offer. It has become very common that there will more than 100 different betting markets for any football match. In 1997 Intertops made the breakthrough in online football betting, by offering fixed odds on their website, and ever since then, a rising number of market players have emerged to tap the market opportunity posed.

The market records a high demand from European betting consumers, who bet across multiple leagues, pre-match and in-play. The market generates a major portion of its revenue from the United Kingdom, Spain, Germany and other European countries as most companies are using expansion into regulated markets as their strategy to generate sustainable revenues. As the online sports betting is predominantly applied in events, such as FIFA World Cup and European Championships, Europe’s online sports betting market posted significant growth in the last few years, due to the 2018 FIFA World Cup. Tennis emerged as one of Europe’s biggest betting sports in 2018, despite Wimbledon occurring at the same time as the FIFA World Cup, which indicates the growing popularity of online sport betting across the European region.