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INDUSTRY REVIEW
2021: THE YEAR IN REVIEW Gambling Insider Editor Tim Poole looks back on 12 months that accelerated the winds of change, brought players back to casinos en masse and saw online gambling’s emphatic surge continue In an autobiography I read this year, 2020 was referred to as The Cursed Year. On that basis – thankfully – 2021 will very much be reflected upon as a year of recovery: economically, socially, physically and psychologically. While land-based casinos were shut for months and socially restricted for most of 2020, they were back to generate record revenues in 2021 (certainly in North America at least). Nowhere more so than in gambling’s spiritual, and historically most lucrative, home: Nevada. Like the t-shirt Joe Swanson enjoyed so much in Family Guy, we are literally talking about billions spent in Las Vegas aka Lost Wages. Gross gaming revenue was back with a bang in 2021. A common pandemic-era misconception,
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meanwhile, was that somehow online gambling suffered in 2020 too. It did not. And, this year, that growth soared to new levels, as the online industry began to widen its influence in North America, continued to deliver results across Europe and even penetrated several emerging markets. But what will we look back on a few years down the line and truly remember 2021 for? There were mega mergers, regulatory fallouts and coronavirus complications. Just another year in gambling... INDUSTRY CONSOLIDATION Inevitably for the gambling and iGaming sectors, the most memorable aspect of 2021 – and recent years in general – was the
industry-changing M&A that took place. This year, in particular, it was difficult to even keep track of who was acquiring whom (Monica: you know, sometimes it’s who!). The past 12 months additionally saw whole new M&A trends develop, such as operators starting to acquire suppliers more often, and equally creating their own game studios. As ever, there were numerous affiliate M&A transactions, while the big-name US operators conducted plenty of new business, too. Notable M&A deals included: - Penn National Gaming purchasing Score Media and Gaming – $2bn - DraftKings purchasing Golden Nugget Online Gaming – $1.56bn
