Business for many industries has not bounced back to pre-pandemic levels, but the gaming industry has been one of the few to see large growths in both revenue and customer base. One company that is riding the global wave of success and has recently expanded its operations and portfolio of gaming brands is the Irish Gaming Giant Flutter. Flutter operates an impressive cluster of well-known betting brands, including Paddy Power, Sky Bet, Betfair, and the American brand, Poker Stars.
An Increase in Revenue
In recent announcements, Flutter has said its operations in the UK have increased revenue by 7% over figures previously recorded before the Covid-19 pandemic. This is impressive, given betting shops only reopened 3 months ago in June.
What is even more stark and impressive, is the increased customer numbers that Flutter’s online gambling operations have achieved – with online customer numbers increasing an incredible 60% over pre-pandemic levels. A better understanding of how Flutter has achieved this can be seen by looking at the effect the pandemic had on individual gamers. When we first entered lockdown in Spring 2020, all non-essential shops closed. This included betting shops and casinos. This coincided with many of us being forced to work from home.
Unsurprisingly, gamers did not want to stop gaming, many took to online gaming. This uptake was fast, and like a snowball rolling it picked up speed and expanded, many new online offerings were launched during this time by gaming companies to try and take a share in the newly exploding online gaming industry.
It isn’t just Flutter that has seen massive amounts of growth over the last 18 months; In fact, many online industries saw an increase in use – in terms of both hours and money spent. With people being forced to spend more time at home, and reluctance to use physical money notes to pay for goods, industries that were able to provide a safe way to spend money online saw the most success.
We know that various parts of the world have different gambling laws and that strict rules can affect the types of bets people make. Both the US and Canada have seen a re-haul of many of their own gambling laws recently, especially Canada that has made a change that allows each province to make their own laws when it comes to what sports betting they do and do not allow. When any company relaxes their gambling rules and allows things like sports betting to take place, this opens it up for the rest of the world too. Just because you live in Ireland, doesn’t mean that you exclusively want to bet on Irish events. With the US relaxing rules around single-event sports betting, this means that even those in Ireland using any of the Flutter platforms now get a chance to participate.
Recent Announcements by Flutter That Have Helped Company Growth
Not ones to be left behind, Flutter has made several announcements over recent years which have helped the company grow. With any company that wishes to invest in its own growth, they need to listen to customer feedback and make sure that they are doing everything it can to keep up with customer demand.
One great move they made recently was to announce that they would be introducing a number of measures to encourage safe betting within Ireland. One of these measures was to commit 1% of their Net Gaming Review to support the treatment and education of gambling problems, They also banned the use of credit cards to their platforms and restricted what sports betting advertising could take place. All of these steps show their users (and potential customers) that Flutter is a betting company that cares about the wellbeing of its users, and as such, they’re a company you can feel safe using.
Wanting to make life as easy as possible for its users, they also introduced PayPal as an option for depositing and withdrawing from accounts across some of its platforms. This meant that a wider range of consumers who can use PayPal to bet on sports online in Ireland would be catered for on their platform, which can only be a positive when it comes to encouraging company growth.
Over recent months the betting industry has really come into its own with regards to offering online services, as it quickly jumped onto the fact that people who had previously visited physical betting venues would no longer be able to. One thing the industry as a whole did was ensure that those experiencing online betting for the first time had a smooth transition process; because they were aware that trying something new like this could be quite daunting.
The Future of Flutter and Betting in General
Along the lines of keeping customers happy and ensuring that industry growth is still possible; it is likely that the gambling industry will continue to go through changes. One thing that many people are expecting to see is Flutter and other online gambling operators expanding the currency they accept when people want to use their accounts. Although it is possible to use Cryptocurrency across a handful of online casinos it is far from the norm for digital currency to be listed there as an option amongst pounds and dollars. We’re starting to see signs that Cryptocurrency is becoming more mainstream and as such it is likely that those accepting payments for services online will need to be more on board with people paying in this way. As an industry that relies on technology and has lots of customers into tech, it is essential that online casinos and similar keep up with this. Flutter has seen some amazing numbers when it comes to growth and revenue over recent years and as such is likely to be one of the frontrunners when it comes to offering things like Cryptocurrency as a way to use a number of their online casino/betting platforms.
