Online casinos are not strictly legal in Hong Kong, and there are no homegrown providers. Thus, many players turn to offshore operators to get the latest in iGaming technology and service.
Gambling in Hong Kong exists in a grey area. The only organisation to hold a license for gambling services is the Hong Kong Jockeys Club. Yet the organisation provides no online or digital facilities, and its brick-and-mortar establishments also provide little in the way of casino gaming. This has led to gamblers looking elsewhere for iGaming and betting options. So what are players in Hong Kong actually looking for?
Hong Kong Gambling in Statistics
A report by the Ping Wo Fund, conducted in collaboration with the University of Hong Kong, looked into the participation of Hong Kong residents. It found that around 39.5% had participated in gambling activities in a calendar year. This was a significant decrease from when the previous survey had been taken in 2016, which yielded a result of 61.5%. With this, the number of those suffering from gambling disorder increased from 1.4 per cent in 2016 to 0.45 per cent in 2021.
The issues with these statistics are Hong Kong’s laws. Online gambling is illegal, but offshore casinos and access to them are rarely enforced. Thus, it could be that during this survey, any access to offshore casinos was not reported.
Due to this, it makes getting an exact figure for online gambling hard to ascertain. A study by the National Institute of Health suggests that around $12 billion is spent by Hong Kong residents on offshore gambling. This would make sense, as there is a range of top-quality casinos that now serve the Hong Kong market. They have all the top-quality games, including slots and table games, you would expect from any global casino. You can read more about the top online casinos in Hong Kong and see what bonuses are on offer, as well as the latest game offerings.
What are Hong Kong Gamblers Missing?
To show how out of touch gambling is in Hong Kong, you just need to look at what is available. The Hong Kong Jockey Club owns the license for gambling, and its offerings are slim. Players can bet on horse racing through pari-mutuel betting, or bet on football for foreign leagues using fixed odds. In the last month, the province has come one step closer to allowing betting on basketball. This has to be done at physical locations. Aside from this, they can also play the lottery.
When it comes to casinos, only physical ones exist, and they can only operate outside Hong Kong. Thus, you will need to board a cruise ship to find any sort of table game or slot, then wait until it ventures out to sea.
Compare this to the offering of a single, fairly average online casino in Europe or the US. Many have upward of 1000 slot games. This is one of the most popular verticals in the world. It currently has an estimated turnover of $78.66 billion across the globe per year, rising to $153.57 billion by 2030. That is an annual growth rate of 11.9%.
Table games should not be overlooked either. In recent years, many casinos have seen the more traditional video-style card game replaced by live dealer games. These use streaming technology, which connects players to a live dealer in a studio. As they deal cards and spin roulette wheels, players can interact and make decisions based on the onscreen action.
Future Developments
Finally, the Hong Kong market is missing out on a whole new era of gambling titles. In recent years, the crash gaming phenomenon has taken hold. With easy-to-play, fast-turnaround gambling pursuits, it has attracted a whole new audience. Primarily, these are younger players who have grown up with accessible mobile gaming titles and now want something more adventurous, but without the lengthy rulebook of games like poker.
This is an audience Hong Kong is not catering to, particularly if it remains limited to the services provided by the Hong Kong Jockeys Club. By sticking with traditions, they are missing out on developments like the $97 billion crash gaming sector. This is at a time when their traditional forms of gambling revenue are in decline. Horse racing, for example, took a HK$1.6 billion nosedive from the start of March until the end of June.
Also added to this is the Jockey Club’s track record of resting on its laurels. In the late nineties, it had around two million customers. This then plunged to 900,000 by 2005, and they had to invest in a large transformation project involving facility upgrades, technology and marketing to entice customers back. It seems that if they want to win back the consumers being lost to overseas casinos and give the Hong Kong public what they want, then investment, along with huge regulation changes, is what is required once more.