With debate raging over the Federal Government's Interactive Gambling Bill and the feasibility of attempting to ban gambling on the Internet, it is worth asking just what level of penetration has so far been achieved by online gaming in the Australian marketplace.
Gambling-related sites, including online gambling, lotto, casino promotion and betting tips, attracted 0.45 percent of Australian Internet traffic for the month of May 2001, a figure that has remained consistent throughout the year. To put this in context, Australians are viewing more gambling content on the Internet than traditional Australian activities like AFL Football Web sites (0.32 percent), and Real Estate Web sites (0.40 percent). The Gambling sub-category is also the second most popular of the 16 'Entertainment' sub-categories behind Television.
Despite the Federal Government's rationale of preventing the creation of a 'casino in every lounge room', Web sites relating to Horse Racing are clearly the most popular destinations in the sector, with the top two sites--www.racetab.com.au and www.tabcorp.com.au--receiving more than 20 percent of all traffic to the category. Sports betting and lottery Web sites dominate the top 20 Gambling Web sites with the most popular of the online casinos--www.casinoonnet.com--ranked fifth with a 3.5 percent share of traffic to the category. The proposed ban on online gambling is therefore unlikely to have a great impact on the composition of the top 20 Web sites in the Hitwise Gambling category.
Overall, almost 40 percent of Australian visits to Gambling Web sites are directed offshore. The large number of Australians already using the Net to access gambling Web sites offshore also indicates the enormity of the task before the Government in its pursuit of overseas operators who offer online gambling services to people within Australia.
Hitwise monitored 346 gambling-related sites throughout May 2001 and less than 100 of these were classified as Australian. The majority of this traffic is captured by the top 20 Web sites. The average visitor to Web sites in the Gambling category over the past week spent 8 mins 23 secs at the site, just above the overall average for Australian Internet traffic of 7 mins 50 secs.
The who and when of online gambling?
The busiest day of the week for the category is Saturday, when almost one quarter of the total weekly traffic to Gambling Web sites is received, coinciding with major Horse Racing meetings and 'leisure time' for most Australians.
Hitwise demographic analysis of the online gambling audience indicates that men make up 63 percent of all visits to the category, with the majority of visits being from 25-44 year olds. In terms of the Web sites visited before and after Gambling, Hitwise Click Stream data for the week ending 16 June shows that the majority of Gambling traffic arrives via Web sites in the Entertainment or Sport categories as well as from other gambling-related Web sites.
Search Engines and directories deliver 11 percent of traffic to the Gambling category, well below the average for all Web sites of 23 per cent.
Click Stream data for individual Web sites also shows a clear delineation between casino and sports betting sites. For example, the top Web site visited before www.casinoonnet.com is www.jackpot.com, whilst the top Web site visited before www.racetab.com.au is www.tabcorp.com.au. This indicates that there are two distinct groups of punters online, with the flow of traffic to sports-based betting Web sites unlikely to be affected by the proposed ban.
Adrian Giles is a founder and director of Hitwise. He can be contacted on 03 8530 2400 or at adrian.giles@hitwise.com
