The rise of social casino games: Changes in the size and composition of the Android social casino market from 2012-2020, availability to children, and predictions for future growth

Social casino games are video games that consist of simulations of gambling products and activities. Players of social casino games may pay money to gamble. However, they are unable to ‘cash out’ their winnings, allowing these games to be commonly regulated as video games rather than gambling products.There is concern that exposure to social casino games may lead to problem gambling. However, key questions regarding the past and future growth in prevalence of social casino games remain unanswered. Furthermore, it is unclear how much innovation in terms of products on the market have occurred in recent years, and how available these products are to children. The practical importance of the relationship between social casino play and gambling is therefore unclear.In order to address this, we analysed the monthly estimated installs of all social casino games (n=2344) on Android phones from March 2012 to February 2020. Results suggested that social casino games increased in prevalence from 33.30 million estimated installs in 2012 to 1.39 billion in 2020, projected to increase to 1.73 - 2.03 billion by February 2022. This expansion appears linked to a related expansion of mobile phone gaming. Indeed, analysis of the entire Android gaming market (n=75168) indicated that the prevalence of social casino games relative to the overall market diminished during the period under test from 2.54% of all game installs to 1.56%, and projected that this metric is unlikely to rise importantly in future.Analysis suggests a high level of churn and innovation in the social casino game market, with new products continually emerging and old ones being constantly retired: For example, of the 1166 social casino games available in February 2020, only 47 were on the market in 2012. Finally, an analysis of the age ratings of social casino games currently available to download on Android reveals a market overwhelmingly available to children: Of the 1132 games whose ratings were extracted, 1107 (97.7%) bore an age rating of 12+ or younger.When taken together, these results suggest that social casino games constitute a dynamic genre of gambling-like products that are experiencing continual and important growth, are forecasted to continue growing, and are highly available to children.