In keeping with the shifting trends that are taking place throughout the gaming industry as a whole, the real money gaming market is treading new ground when it comes to engaging with and retaining a more diverse demographic of gamers.

In recent years, especially in the digital gaming segments, there’s been a distinct change in the average gamer or punter who participates within the real money gaming industry. Research conducted into competitions, slots gaming and sports betting verticals has revealed that female gamers play a much bigger role in the success of iGaming than first thought. Could women, then, be iGaming’s biggest untapped market?

Women and Slots Games

Several institutions and organisations within iGaming have recently conducted surveys and research into the habits of female gamers. The results show that women have a strong preference for specific types of real money activities, and also reveal a lot about what makes these types of activities so attractive to marginalised groups.

The Oregan State University-Cascades looked at the demographics of people playing digital slot machines and discovered that women were the largest present. The online slots genre is huge and encompasses games based on a vast range of themes from Wild West experiences to slots inspired by seasonal holidays, movies and TV shows. Naturally, among that, there are games that appeal to a broader demographic.

However, it’s not necessarily the themes of slots games that are so appealing to female players, but the actualities of casino games themselves. Today’s digital casino games are focused more on the social aspect of gaming, providing lightweight gaming experiences that are easy to get started with.

Trends on Both Sides of the Pond

As two of the most dominant global iGaming markets, the UK and the US typically set the trends that the rest of the global gaming industry follows. In both countries, this surge of interest in digital casino, poker and sports betting activities amongst female gamers is apparent.

The UKGC has reported that interest in wagering activities with women has risen by 8 percentage points over the past few years. Nearly half of the women surveyed by the organisation had engaged with segments including lotteries, slots and competitions.

Additionally, data analysed by the University of Liverpool revealed that the female gamers who do have iGaming accounts play for longer periods than men and also spend more overall. Meanwhile, across the pond on US shores, women make up 57% of the digital casino gaming market.

It’s not just casino gaming or competitions that are proving to be popular with women. They’re also heavily involved in the digital arm of sports betting.

According to Forbes magazine, while the total number of male punters across mobile wagering apps exceeds the total number of women by 250%, the growth rate of women punters signing up and using apps is almost 50% greater.

What Motivates Women to Play?

For much of the industry’s history, the experiences of individual demographics were typically hidden within generalised representative statistics. However, operators have begun to dive deeper into the behaviours and motivations of different types of gamers.

Women gamers – based on the latest research – clearly engage more with different products than male gamers typically do. They’ve also found ways to incorporate iGaming into their day to day lives.

The ease of use of digital platforms and gaming apps is clearly playing a significant role in driving the popularity of these products in the female gaming community. Rather than needing to travel to potentially intimidating environments like casinos, poker rooms or bookmakers, digital products instead provide a safe space of anonymity for any registered player.

Similarly, women find it easier to educate themselves about the nuances of the different iGaming strands online than they do in brick and mortar venues. To anyone with a connected device, Google is merely a tap away and it can open up a world of educational resources in addition to new gaming experiences.

Online sports betting and casino games have become incredibly popular in many parts of the world. In the UK, where the industry is regulated but relatively free, bettors spend more than £6 billion on “remote” wagering each year.

Across the pond, in the United States, things are a little different. The market is still developing, with most states only permitted to set their own rules about sports betting since 2018. Even then, local legislatures have reacted with differing levels of urgency, meaning bettors in some states have been able to wager for some time, while others are still waiting for their elected officials to pass the necessary legislation.

As more and more people begin to take advantage of the plethora of free casino offers advertised by sportsbooks, few are likely to be thinking about what these companies do behind the scenes to keep their data and money safe.

Thankfully, the licensing requirements written into gaming laws in most regions place a lot of obligations on the companies operating online bookmakers and casinos so that their customers can just focus on having fun. Below are some of the most common ways to keep online betting services secure.

Encryption

In 2021, encryption is just a given. If developers are not using some form of encryption to store sensitive information in their applications, then they are unlikely to be in a job for very long. The same applies to browser connections to websites. Apart from the fact that Google penalizes websites that aren’t using HTTPS by default, casinos and betting sites need to use encryption to help prevent “man-in-the-middle” attacks that could see customer’s connections intercepted.

Separate Accounts

Another area of security that companies in the iGaming industry need to consider is the protection of player funds. According to the Great British Gambling Commission, iGaming companies can have as much as £1 billion in customer funds on their books at any one time.

Customer accounts in casinos and bookmakers don’t have the same level of protection as banks, where the UK government’s Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) would step in to protect deposits in the event of a financial institution failing. Instead, iGaming companies need to set up legal structures that separate player funds from their balance sheets or use insurance arrangements to mitigate the risk should they go bankrupt.

The Gambling Commission has three categories of protection. The highest, known as “High protection” requires funds to be stored in a separate account and to be held in trust, with control given to an independent entity.

Two-Factor Security

Two-factor security was something few outside of the cybersecurity field had heard of until recently, but thankfully it has become commonplace today. It adds an extra layer of protection to user accounts by requiring the user to enter a one-time code, usually generated by an app, physical key, or sent via SMS message. Nearly all iGaming companies now support two-factor security today to help prevent accounts from being compromised.

Ensuring the Fairness of Games

Sports betting is kept fair by the fact that the games being wagered on are played by independent third parties. However, when it comes to casino games, there is an element of trust required, as the casino operator is the one in control of the cards, wheels, slots, and dice.

In physical casinos, ensuring fairness is relatively easy. Dice can be checked to ensure they’re not weighted, decks of cards can be shuffled and/or replaced, and slot machines can be inspected. For online games, computer code generates the outcomes. That’s where random number generators come in. Online casinos use things like atmospheric interference and the movement of lava lamps to generate truly random numbers that are then fed into the game’s code to ensure a fair and unpredictable game.

Using external audits of these random number generators and software, iGaming companies also add an additional layer of verification to their systems, helping to both ensure their services are secure and demonstrate it to their customers.