Betnow wins Balderton funds for text-to-bet. Addicts beware.
A Juniper Research white paper released in October put mobile gambling as being worth $1.3 billion in 2007 and $26 billion by 2012. The UK is a hotbed of mobile gambling already, along with many other European countries where SMS services continue to boom. I couldn’t find more recent research but a study in 2005 found traffic to mobile gambling sites was rocketing in the UK by 367 per cent year on year sparking concerns about addiction.
Mike Arrington of TechCrunch US believes that Balderton may regret the investment “if the business gets a bad reputation.” This may be the case. If the technology works, Betnow could well take a sizeable chunk of the market. But if I know the UK press they will go after the government for not reigning in gambling companies or funding enough gambling addiction programmes. They probably won’t go after Betnow. Afterall, too many UK journalists like a punt as it is.