Online Gambling Still Popular in Germany

12/24/09 - A new Forsa study of German online gambling commissioned by the Association of Information Technology, Telecommunications and New Media (Bitkom) has shown that attempts to ban online gambling in order to protect state monopolies have only slightly dampened demand from German Internet punters.

Survey results released this week and published by Techfieber.de show that some 2 million German adults use the Internet for some form of betting, whether it be for lotteries, sports bets or poker. In a similar study last year, the number was 2.2 million.

Breaking the numbers down by gender, slightly more than 1.7 million German men, and 300 000 women, gambled online during the year under review.

Lottery wagering was the most popular form of gambling, played by 59 percent of Internet punters, with poker second at 22 percent and sportsbetting third at 18 percent. The figures are relatively unchanged from last year, when 700 000 wagered on the lotteries, 430 000 favoured online poker and online casino games, and 500 000 bet online on sports events, with 96 percent of those betting on Bundesliga matches and every sixth punter gambling on large football events.

Women mainly favoured the lotteries, with 64 percent of female gamblers making up this segment, compared with only 57 percent of men.

Across the 1 000 strong sample, Euro 20 a month was the dominant betting budget, claimed by two thirds of respondents, whilst the remaining third spent more than this.

Bitkom executive Achim Berg said the study again confirms the popularity of online gambling in Germany, and called upon the German states to consider a modernisation of the country's gambling laws at their next meeting in March 2010.

"The current betting scandal in football has clearly demonstrated [that] the German ban only paves the way for a thriving black market," said Berg, calling for a state licensing regime embracing Internet gambling providers. "We must ensure that the same high standards apply for both public and private providers," he concluded.

The latest Research and Markets study of the German market predicts that it will grow from the current Euro 2.2 billion a year to approaching Euro 5 billion a year by 2010.

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