Revenue up big for casino apps as gamers go wild for digital gambling

Something inside humans makes us love gambling. Even if the wagers are only for digital money, we’re willing to put our real cash on the line to chase after that thrill.

Spending on mobile casino games on iOS was up 55 percent from November 2013 to November 2014, according to the latest report from industry-tracking firm App Annie. The market is worth $2.7 billion today, and that’s almost exclusively social-casino games in which players can’t win real money. But that’s slowly changing as countries like the United Kingdom and Australia open up real-currency gambling, and that has the digital gambling industry on a pace to reach $100 billion in revenue by 2017. For comparison, mobile gaming was only worth about $21 billion in 2014, and console gaming generates around $55 billion in spending.