Malta is Europe’s sports betting capital with most online searches

Google searches for ‘sports betting’ are currently highest in Malta, a ranking published by TopRatedCasinos.co.uk has revealed.

To find the sports betting capitals of Europe, TopRatedCasinos inputted several keyword variations into the keyword analytics section of SEMrush.

27 EU countries were inputted and analysed individually and searches per capita were considered, before final results were listed, to make findings more accurate.

Interestingly, TopRatedCasinos’ research found that although Google Trends shows an increase in sports betting in Hungary, Hungarians are among the least interested in placing a bet on sporting events, ranking 20th overall for interest around the sports betting topic, with only 0.43 searches on average per 1,000 population.

TopRatedCasinos found average monthly searches like “sports betting” are currently highest per capita in Malta. In fact, in the last 30 days, there have been 2,420 individual searches around the topic, which equates to 5.48 searches on average per 1,000 population.

This is followed by high search results per capita in Ireland and Cyprus, with 16,610 and 3,470 sports betting searches on average per month, respectively.

At the other end of the scale, there were countries like Slovakia, Germany, and Poland.

In Slovakia, there are 1,690 searches (0.31 searches per 1,000 population) a month containing keywords like “sports betting.”

While in Germany and Poland, we find interest around the sports betting topic to be seemingly very low in accordance with population size. Germany for instance only had 0.29 searches on average per 1,000 population.

To find out the sports betting capitals of Europe, TopRatedCasinos inputted several keyword variations into the keyword analytics section of online visibility and marketing tool SEMrush. The variations included: “sports betting”, “sports gambling”, “bet on sports”, “online sport bet” and “online sports gambling”. Results for all 27 EU countries were inputted and analysed individually before final results were listed. All 27 EU countries were ranked in accordance with searches per capita, to make findings more accurate.

Gambling in Malta

Betting and gambling in Malta have been popular in Malta for centuries, with lotto becoming the predominant game in the 18th century when it was first introduced by the British.

In 1922, the first Lotto Regulations were published, based on the Italian lotto, and the game became a weekly appointment for many Maltese, even during the dark days of World War II.

And gambling really took off with the onset of the Internet, with the Public Lotto Ordinance originally regulating and licensing gambling sites. Those regulationas have since been updated numerous times, culminating in the setting of the Malta Gaming Authority to oversee online gaming in Malta.

Land-based gambling focuses around lotto and its derivatives, horse racing, sports betting through U-bet (with football being a top favourite) and scratch and win tickets.

Maltese punters also have access to practically all online gambling and sports betting sites. And with Malta being a member of the EU, Maltese gamblers are, for the most part, unrestricted with regards to which payment method they can use when depositing money into their betting accounts.

Research carried out by TopRatedCasinos.co.uk