SOFTSWISS report says North America will outgrow Europe as regulatory pressure tightens

SOFTSWISS’s iGaming Trends 2027 report points to a familiar high-risk payment story: growth is still there, but the regulatory and tax mix is getting less forgiving in Europe while North America keeps the faster top-line momentum. For PSPs and acquirers, that usually means more volume in the regions that are also more expensive to underwrite.

1. SOFTSWISS projects global online gambling GGR to rise from $349 billion in 2026 to $415.5 billion by 2028, which works out to a CAGR of approximately 9%. The report, released this week, draws on H2 Gambling Capital data and insights from WorldGaming, as well as major tech players like AWS.
2. Mobile is the big engine in that forecast. The report says mobile’s share of onshore GGR will climb from 45% in 2026 to 78% in 2028, which matters for payment teams because mobile-heavy traffic tends to push more volume through cards, wallets, and short-funnel checkout flows.
3. Europe remains the largest regulated online gambling market, but the report frames it as a market under pressure. GGR is forecast to grow from $85.3 billion in 2026 to $95.2 billion in 2028, a 6% CAGR, while taxation and product restrictions keep tightening across the region.
4. The report lists a series of concrete interventions: limit-setting measures across 30 European jurisdictions, Germany’s slot stake limit, mandatory five-second spin delays and a €1,000 monthly cross-operator deposit limit, the UK’s move toward online slot stake caps of £5 and £2, and the Netherlands’ deposit checks at €700 per month for over-24s and €300 for younger players.
5. SOFTSWISS warns that higher taxes and tighter product rules can push customers toward unlicensed operators, which hits channelisation. In the Netherlands, the regulated channel share fell below 50% in the first half of 2025 after a tax hike to 37.8% of GGR. In Great Britain, offshore GGR is forecast to rise by 110% by 2028 despite remote gaming duty (RGD) increases, and the UK is also weighing a possible machine gaming duty (MGD) increase in the autumn 2026 budget.
6. North America is the fastest-growing major market in the report, with online GGR expected to rise from $58.1 billion in 2026 to $76.6 billion in 2028, a 15% CAGR across the US and Canada. The catch is that the US remains fragmented, with full online casino authorisation still uneven rather than one clean nationwide rulebook.

For high-risk PSPs, the read-through is simple enough: Europe still brings scale, but the compliance and product constraints are getting heavier; North America offers faster growth, but it comes with the usual US fragmentation and state-by-state complexity. That is the kind of spread that shapes where acquirers want exposure and how much reserve they ask for.