5 Biggest Trends in iGaming You Won’t Want to Miss Out On

Global iGaming GGR has just reached a huge $115 billion, up 12% year-on-year. It’s one of the world’s only industries that’s actually booming, driven by explosive sports betting, sweepstakes casinos, online casinos, and trending prediction markets. There’s plenty going on and in some cases players are overwhelmed with choice, as new trends keep popping up every few months. So, if you’re a stakeholder in the iGaming space and want to know which trends are worth interacting with, here’s a complete breakdown. Let’s dive in.

5 Biggest Trends in iGaming You Won’t Want to Miss Out On

Sweepstakes Casinos

It was back during the COVID-19 pandemic when sweepstakes casinos first became a hot trend and they’ve never really slowed down since.

In fact, they’re bigger than ever and the most recent data says there are over 400 active sweepstakes casinos online.

For those yet to give them a try, sweepstakes casinos use virtual ‘Sweeps Coins’ instead of actual cash, and anyone who collects enough of these coins can then redeem prizes.

Stake.us, Crown Coins Casino, Chumba Casino, and others are all huge names at the moment, while new launches like KingPrize and SweepJungle keep attracting plenty of players as well.

Across all of the major sweepstakes casinos listed on SweepsKings, it’s possible to claim over 500 Sweeps Coins in total, the equivalent of around $500, so players are jumping at the opportunity. Few offers are bigger.

Once you’ve bet enough Sweeps Coins and built your collection, you might then want to exchange them for gift cards, cash transfers, or even merchandise. The list of prizes is usually huge. Choice is not a problem.

These casinos also come with features like fun leaderboards, free-entry tournaments, and daily missions, so it’s easy to see why they’re not just one of iGaming’s biggest trends at the moment, but gaming as a whole.

Card Ripping

If you’ve spent any amount of time on social media over the past year, you’ll know that card ripping is huge right now. Gen Z are going nuts over trading cards like Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh!, to the point where collectible card games are the most-purchased secondhand product category by Gen Z in the US on eBay so far this year.

To capitalize on this, card ripping sites like Mr Loot and Ripz.gg have hit the internet. Even Crown Coins Casino has launched its own card rips feature – Crown Rips – that lets users collect shippable sports and Pokémon trading cards. The expectation here is that card ripping may soon be the biggest pull in all of iGaming, especially among younger generations as more people start discovering these sites.

Prediction Markets

Unless you’ve been living under a rock recently, you’ll know all about prediction markets.

They’ve completely taken over the US and other parts of the world, effectively allowing people to place financial contracts, which are technically bets, on thousands of potential real-life future events.

On the likes of Polymarket and Kalshi, you can bet on who the next president will be, the weather conditions in Florida tomorrow, whether Bitcoin will go up or down in price, and more, all by simply selecting ‘YES/NO’ on the event happening.

Combined monthly global trading volume on major prediction markets went from just under $5 billion to a huge $24 billion recently. Investment firm Bernstein predicts it will hit $1 trillion annually by 2030.

Kalshi alone now has over 5.1 million active monthly users, too. This has all the makings of one of the biggest iGaming trends of all time.

Before long, it could reach a point where the vast majority of people are using prediction markets over both sportsbooks and regular online casinos, as Gen Z in particular is showing a real appetite for the sort of casual, hands-off betting that platforms Kalshi is offering.

Live Dealer Games

Another rising trend in the iGaming space is the adoption of live dealer games across both online casinos and sweepstakes casinos.

These games offer the real-life ‘Vegas’ experience, as players get to interact and play against actual human dealers through live video streams.

It’s like hitting the Las Vegas strip through your device’s screen and these games are proving to be so popular that Stake.us, BetMGM, FanDuel, DraftKings, Crown Coins Casino, and countless other operators all now offer them.

From blackjack to roulette, you’re spoilt for choice with today’s live dealer games and many of them even offer fresh spins on classics, like ICONIC21’s Gravity Roulette.

Kick and Twitch Streams

Pre-2019, almost all video game streams were centered around games like GTA V and Fortnite. But over the past half-decade, iGaming has become so mainstream that even casual gamers are doing it, and it’s led to an explosion of gambling streamers across Kick and Twitch (the ‘Slots & Casino category is the fifth most-watched on Kick).

Even rapper Drake, who is reportedly paid upwards of $100m a year by crypto casino Stake, hosts his own ‘Stake x Drake’ live streams which usually involve him betting millions of dollars. There’s even potential for gambling streams to be the most-watched category in the future as more streamers start to do it.

Look Out for Changing Regulations

With all the great movements and trends going on in iGaming right now, it’s also important to keep in mind that regulatory changes remain a potential future problem. As it stands, around a dozen states have outright banned or restricted sweepstakes casinos, including California and Indiana, while a growing number currently push to have prediction markets stronger regulated. Simply put, iGaming has reached such a seismic scale in the US that a rising number of states are now having to assess these popular sites more closely and regulate them, which could potentially restrict future access.

For now, though, at least, iGaming is going through a boom period, despite regulatory attempts. From a player perspective, the opportunities are endless, but safe play remains essential, as well as abiding by minimum player age requirements.