The first 6 months of 2022 showed that the online casino market is hotter than ever, at least for the operators carrying a license from the Malta Gaming Authority (MGA).
Compared to the same period previous years, the number of players reached a new record. With the help of an 8.7% increase, the record number of active player accounts rose to an astounding 19.3 million.
Malta Gaming Authority
What Is the Reason Behind the New Record?
Considering there were 8,9 million new accounts started during the time, the high numbers should come as no surprise. The majority of those new accounts belonged to young players whose age placed them in the 18 to 24 category. This group contributed to almost 25% of the total player base.
Operators Are Generating Millions
The fact that the gaming industry is vital for the Maltese economy is nothing new. Fact is that during the first half of 2022, the Malta-licensed operators generated as much as €573 million in gross value, which happens to be around 8% of the Maltese economy.
Compared to the 2021 numbers, that’s an increase of 12.4%, which is pretty impressive.
Employment Numbers Continue to Rise
Gross value isn’t the only indicator that the casino industry is booming. Despite the pandemic years, the sector shows that it’s quick to adapt to changes. Numbers show that another 600 employees were hired during those 6 months, pushing the overall to 10,861 as of June 2022.
An Ability to Remain Flexible
Malta Gaming Authority left a comment in regards to the new report, saying:
“The resilience of the Malta gaming industry during these trying times is largely attributed to its ability to remain flexible and adapt to change, while being supported by the MGA’s continued efforts to ensure that Malta remains a competitive and reputable jurisdiction of establishment.”
Malta
Come Get Your License
By the first half of last year, an impressive 357 online casinos had been issued a license by the MGA. As you probably know, there are different types of licenses in Malta.
- Type 1 License – This will cover online casino games and other similar products. These are responsible for as much as 71.5% of the overall revenue. Of this total, almost 80% came from slots.
- Type 2 License – The other type of license covers sportbooks actually dropped in terms of revenue and were at a total of 21.3%.
- Type 3 License – This one handles any peer-to-peer gambling, which includes poker and other betting exchanges, contributing 7.1% of the revenue pie.
Malta Gambling Enforcement
When it comes to enforcing its power, the MGA only ended up canceling one single license during the time period. This was very low, even though they only canceled 7 during the entire 2021.
To put that in perspective, the two years previous to that, there were 14 cancellations in 2019 and 12 in 2020.
Conclusion
Nobody really knew how the casino industry would handle the pandemic but I think it has shown its resilience and it looks stronger than ever. BTW, if you happened to miss my article on the upcoming tightening to the license requirement in Curacao, click here to read.
Leave a Reply