Gambling On Social Media: The Trends

In this gambling trends insights report, social media will be referring to platforms and sites whose primary purpose is to facilitate social interactions between certain demographics of users. The way that and gambling has become in modern times as a result of online gaming and apps, we are taking a look at social media as a key influencer.

Gambling itself has seen a growing presence on social media, through promotional purposes from operators, to social casino gaming on the platforms. Some studies suggest that social networking sites are used to portray a brand to engage communities, which is how many online gambling sites are using the platforms. In order to gain more of an insight into how social media is used in the gambling world, we’ve looked at some of the most interesting user trends across Google Search, Twitter and Instagram.

Search Trends – ‘Online Gambling’

When it comes to trends on Google, there are a number of interesting results over the past 12 months. For the search query for ‘online gambling’ it’s no surprise to see that the country with the highest search interest is Malta. As one of the largest iGaming hubs in the world, it is easy to see why Malta tops the list. However, some interesting additions include St. Helena, which is in second place in regards to search interest. This is extremely intriguing, as this tiny island hosts very limited forms of gambling. It is one of the most isolated regions in the world, and has a population of fewer than 5,000 people. Other key countries on this list include South Africa, Singapore, Australia, United States, New Zealand, United Kingdom, Philippines, and Canada.

Search Trends – ‘Online Slots’

Interestingly, the search trends for ‘online slots’ also differ. It appears that the Maltese are not quite as interested in online slots games, as the country didn’t even make the top 10! St. Helena took the top of the list for search interest by region at 100, which again is interesting considering the small population on the island. After St. Helena, we see a dramatic decline in search interest. While a few familiar names crop up in the list of top 10 regions with the most search interest, there are a few differentiation between ‘online slots’ and ‘online gambling’. Firstly, Latvia appears on the list for the first time, overtaking South Africa, Australia and Ireland, and the United Kingdom sits at fourth on the list. The top 10 is as follows: St. Helena, New Zealand, Georgia, United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Latvia, South Africa, Australia, and Ireland.

Gambling Hashtag Trends – Twitter

Twitter is one of the world’s most popular social media platforms, and as of the first quarter of 2017, had 328 million monthly active users. With a huge number of users, and the revolution of the hashtag on the site, it was only right for us to actively scour the huge range of gambling-related hashtags to pull the data of the most popular. We found a number of interesting trends relating to the number of hashtags on this particular social media channel.

At WINK Slots, our first thought was to turn to the hashtag ‘#slot’. We discovered some very interesting statistics relating to this particular hashtag from countries around the world. The top countries that tweeted this particular hashtag was as follows:

US: 38.98%
UK: 22.88%
India: 4.24%
Russia: 5.08%
Italy: 6.78%
Argentina: 2.54%
Japan: 2.54%
Spain: 2.54%
Sweden: 7.63%

Alongside ‘#slot’ we also considered ‘#slotmachine’ and took a look at all of the related hashtags and the top languages to get an idea on just how global this particular hashtag is:

Related Hashtags - #casino, #Las Vegas #bitcoin #Vegas #slots #slot

Top 6 Languages Used - 48% English, 20% Thai, 19% Italian, 7% Unrecognized, 3% Russian, 3% Spanish Castilian

All of these statistics show hashtags that were sampled from 2011.

World’s Most Instagrammed Gambling Cities

Instagram is an up and coming social media platform, and with the integration with Facebook in recent years, this growing platform is becoming more popular than ever. In fact, 59% of internet users between the ages of 18 and 29 use Instagram and 33% of internet users between the ages of 30 and 49 use the social channel! With this in mind, we decided to take a look at the most Instagrammed gambling cities around the world.

Unsurprisingly, popular tourist destination and once the Gambling Destination of the World, Las Vegas tops the list for the most Instagrammed gambling city in the world. In fact, in 2015, more than 107,000 photos with gambling-related hashtags came from this city. Whether that’s due to the neon lights, or the 42 million visitors throughout 2015, this certainly is a perfect spot for an Insta-pic.

Atlantic City took second place in 2015 with 14,795 gambling photos, with Macau in third (13,928 gambling photos) and Monte Carlo in fourth place (12,078).

However, in 2016, Atlantic City, Macau and Monte Carlo were not even listed in the Independent’s 16 Most Instagrammed Places In The World! Instagram released their annual list which showed that while Las Vegas placed at #7, Atlantic City and other well-known gambling destinations were nowhere to be seen. Instead, the likes of London (#15) and Barcelona (#16) were placed, due to their iconic skylines and architecture.