Arts, Entertainment and Recreation industry

Arts, entertainment and recreations market is worth 26.8 billion TL

According to TurkStat 2017 Market Data Report, the size of  Turkish arts, entertainment and recreation market has reached to 26.8 billion TL in 2017, which was a growth rate of 15.7 per cent from the previous year. The sector enjoyed the biggest growth between 2010 and 2011 by growing 24.9 per cent. Majority of the growth came from two sectors: gambling and betting activities and sports activities. While gambling and betting activities turnover increased by 11.2 per cent from 2016 to 2017, the sports activities growth was 24.8 per cent for the same period.  

Analyzing the industry in terms of USD, the data revealed that Turkish Arts, Entertainment and Recreations market size decreases to 7.3 billion dollars with a drop of 4.26 per cent when compared to 7.7 billion dollars in 2016. Actually there in no growth but decline in the sector since 2013 in terms of USD.

A growing betting sector

Following global trends, the major segments within the Turkish Arts, Entertainment and Recreation market are gambling and betting; and sports activities and amusement and recreation, roughly amounting to 88 per cent of the sector. In Turkey, betting is highly regulated and the legal operation is run through only three public agencies: Spor Toto (IDDAA), National Lottery Directorate (Lottery and numeric games) and Turkish Jockey Club (horse betting). Following the global trend, sports is one of the biggest sectors in Turkey.  

Billions of dollars are invested in sports sector every year in the industry. In 2017, IDDAA revenues reached to 9 billion TL; horse race betting to 4.5 billion and national lottery games to 3.2 billion. IDDAA makes up roughly 55 per cent of the betting market and its deemed as the most preferred and played betting game. It is becoming more popular every year which is reflected in the annual growth rate of 5 per cent. In Turkey, roughly 5-6 million people, one in every 15, play bets

Regulation of betting and gambling

Online gambling, which is currently prohibited in Turkey has a market of over 40 billion TL, which is four times of the legal betting. The law that prohibits online gambling in Turkey was passed in 2007 and recently Turkey has taken measures to prevent players from using foreign internet gambling websites as well. One of these measures is preventing Turkish banks from authorizing transactions to online casino accounts. Another such measure was to restrict ancillary services such as automatic teller machines and money remittance operations that are believed to facilitate gambling. The fines that have been put in place for accessing online gambling sites range from 55,000-278,000 USD.