He even recommended MyVegas to his five children, ranging from 9 years old to 19 years old. He ought to know: O'Neal said he often plays the games during downtime between watching and analyzing playoff basketball games. "Once players see the game with all the lights, sounds, and features, I think it enables people to want to stay there,'' O'Neal said. Developers have hired high-profile celebrities to help to endorse them as well.īasketball star Shaquille O'Neal teamed up with a company called PlayStudios in March to lend his likeness to two social casino games that are included in the company's MyVegas app: Caddy Shaq, a slot machine game, and ShaqJack, a blackjack title. The games alone aren't the only thing attracting customers. The global market for social casino games is expected to bring in $3.2 billion by the end of 2015, with North America making up nearly half the market, according to SuperData. Revenues from mobiles accounted for 61 percent of the total market during the quarter, compared with 50 percent in the prior year period. Sales are continuing to rise: The global social casino game market rose to $809.6 million during the first quarter of 2015, a bump of 7 percent over the same time a year ago, according to Eilers Research. Social casino apps for smartphones boast a monthly audience more than three and a half times bigger than the masses who visited Las Vegas in all of last year. Zynga's total adjusted sales from social casino games were estimated at $80.1 million during the first quarter of 2015, and Caesars Interactive, whose key social casino titles include Slotomania and Caesars Casino, reported gross revenues of $167.6 million, according to Eilers Research. Though the games can be played for free, revenues from purchases of in-game extras reel in millions for the biggest publishers.
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Both Slotomania: Free Casino Slots and Big Fish Casino: Free Slots consistently ranked in the top 10 in both stores. Apple's App Store showed similar statistics for the month, with social casino apps consistently nabbing three spots in the top 20. This past July, social casino games regularly made up a quarter of the top 20 highest-grossing apps in the Google Play Store, according to App Annie, a market analytics company. Those audiences are opening their wallets for the games too. Gainsbury, the gambling researcher, estimates the games will draw 269 million people worldwide by 2016. The global audience for casino apps on smartphones reached an average of 145 million monthly active users between July 2014 and June 2015 (excluding Asia, which has not been recorded and makes up a quarter of the global market), according to SuperData Research.
GSN's casino app is among the highest-grossing apps in Google's and Apple's app stores. "It's being seen as an acceptable everyday activity, helping people develop positive attitudes about gambling, and that could transfer to young people wanting to pay money to gamble." The games are "normalizing gambling behavior," said Sally Gainsbury, a researcher with the Center for Gambling Education and Research at Southern Cross University in Australia. The lure is simple: Pull in gamers with free play and, once they're engaged, entice them to pay for extras, such as virtual money, gifts and more turns. Part of how he got hooked was the "freemium" nature of social casino titles - a tactic that has become a lucrative new way of doing business within the video game industry. These games, made for mobile devices, sparked Brett's gambling addiction. That's when he, and his parents, decided he needed to get into a recovery program. When he lost more than $5,000 through a combination of card games and sports betting, he was forced to ask his parents for money to tackle his debt. Before long, he was placing bets in a brick-and-mortar casino, much to his financial detriment. But he craved the excitement that came with betting real money.
He started playing Zynga Poker, a slot machine game, last year.
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