The casino industry has always been one of the most lucrative sources of revenue for entrepreneurs. From the conception of gambling games in the ancient era to the modern games, the entrepreneurs were always able to capitalize on the risk-taking urge that was so prevalent in many people. This way, the flow of money never stopped.
However, there was a period of a sharp decline in the profitability of the casino industry from 2000 to 2010. The main focus here is the number of billionaires in this business with regard to other industries. The share of gaming and casino billionaire entrepreneurs fell from 3.6% to 1.2% in the list of billionaire entrepreneurs over that period. This was, in some parts, due to the emerging industries that were quickly producing new billionaires.
After 2010, the number of billionaires from the gaming and casino industry started to take its rightful place after the advent and proliferation of online games.
Rise of online gaming
The Internet has proved to be one of the best ways to become a billionaire. Considering that two of the world’s richest people, Jeff Bezos (Amazon, at $131B) and Bill Gates (Microsoft, at $96.5B), have accumulated their wealth mainly through Internet services goes to show how it dominates the wealth creation.
The gaming and casino industry is no exception here. With the growth of online gaming platforms and the profitability of their distinctive services all over the world such as the online casino VIP programme in Australia, the casino entrepreneurs are able to appeal to their customers with every resource they have at hand.
Just like the GunsBet online casino, these entrepreneurs offer the players not only the entertaining casino games that are already well-known to them but also the special prizes for playing online and claiming bonus points. They’re apparently adapting to the changing incentives of the market.
Because of this trend, the number of gaming and casino-related billionaires has started to rise again and for the year 2018, 1.9% from all the billionaires came from this industry.
As you can see in this chart, billionaires from the gaming and casino industry before the 2010s were a total of 20-25, and their wealth combined couldn’t even reach 100B.
Things are moving quickly from 2010. There’s a sharp increase in not only the number of billionaires but also in their combined wealth, far outweighing the 100B mark.
However, we must mention that the richest two men of the casino industry emerged during that period of decline. Not only that, the richest of them, Sheldon Adelson ($35.1B) set the bar so high that even the wealth of the second richest person, Lui Che Woo, is more than twice less ($13.4B) than his.
Young entrepreneurs dominate mid-ranks
While the top places are already reserved, the mid-section is majorly influenced by the rise of online gaming. The average-sized traditional gambling sites have already transformed and adapted to the demands of the Internet.
This trend also means that there are more young billionaires on the list. They are more capable of configuring their businesses in accordance with modern conditions. The average age of billionaires has reduced with almost 15 years and after 2015, it fluctuates somewhere around the 60-year-old mark.
However, the rise of the young billionaires is also in big part related to family businesses. Existing billionaires are already implementing their succession plans by naming their successors as owners of their wealth. Because of this, one out of five billionaires of the gaming and casino industries are operating as a part of the family business.
Online gaming has further influenced the industry by giving entrepreneurs the opportunity of moving their businesses somewhere far from their countries and hiding their earnings. The Internet ensures that they’re able to reach their customers from any part of the world. In fact, 13% of gaming and gambling billionaires have moved to a different country for that purpose.
The advent of the Internet has truly been one of the biggest revolutions in the history of mankind. It has shaped the way we communicate, connect, learn, create, and entertain ourselves. We are deeply embedded in it and so are the world’s richest people. They use the Internet to create their product and then distribute it.
Gaming and gambling is one of many industries that utilized the online world and used it to accumulate massive revenues. This trend is particularly obvious in the rise of gaming & gambling billionaires from the 2010s, who now constitute almost 2% of the world’s richest people.
