Market Overview
The markets ROX sits in: gaming, racing and digital collectibles — and where they intersect.
Video gaming market
The global games market reached $201.6 billion in 2025, growing 9.1% year on year. That was well ahead of the 3.4% expected at the start of the year, driven by stronger-than-forecast PC performance, the expansion of direct-to-consumer payment channels, mini-games, and an unusually strong release slate.
Four headline metrics for the video gaming market: 201.6 billion dollar market value in 2025, 9.1 percent growth in 2025, 5.1 percent forecast CAGR to 2028, and 32.8 billion dollars of incremental growth by 2028.
Market value 2025
$201.6bn
Software only, ex-hardware
Growth 2025
+9.1%
Beat forecast of +3.4%
Market growth (CAGR)
5.1%
2025 – 2028 forecast
Incremental growth
+$32.8bn
2025 → 2028
Segment breakdown
Mobile remains the largest segment by a wide margin, but 2025 was the first year in some time when every platform grew:
| Segment | 2025 revenue | Growth | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mobile | $113.3bn | +10.7% | 56% |
| Console | $44.7bn | +2.8% | 22% |
| PC | $43.6bn | +12.0% | 22% |
PC's 12% growth was the fastest year on record in Newzoo's dataset. Console growth came largely from new release spending and subscription services, offset by declining DLC and microtransaction revenue — the Nintendo Switch 2 launch sold more than 15 million units in its first seven months.
Looking forward, the market is forecast to grow at a 5.1% CAGR to $234.4 billion by 2028. Mobile is projected at $121.1 billion in 2026 and console at $46.9 billion, though the console figure is heavily dependent on GTA VI shipping on schedule.
Stacked column chart of global games market revenue by segment, 2024 to 2028 forecast, showing mobile, console and PC revenue in billions of dollars.
Audience
The global player base reached 3.58 billion in 2025 — more than 60% of the online population. Mobile accounts for 3 billion players, PC 936 million and console 645 million. Growth is flattening as the market matures, with the fastest expansion now in the Middle East and Africa.
Regionally, Asia-Pacific remains the largest market at $95 billion (+9.9%), followed by North America at $54 billion (+5.7%) and Europe at $36.3 billion (+10.7%). Latin America reached $8.6 billion and MEA $7.7 billion, the fastest-growing region globally at +15%.
Gaming is now larger than recorded music and theatrical box office combined — a gap that has widened every year since 2020.
Horse racing market
Horse racing has been a mass-audience spectator sport for centuries, and its economic engine is wagering rather than ticketing or media. Across the six largest regulated markets, roughly $92 billion is wagered on racing each year:
Donut chart of annual horse racing wagering turnover by market: Japan 23 billion, Hong Kong 18 billion, Australia 18 billion, Great Britain 14 billion, USA 11 billion, France 7.5 billion US dollars.
| Market | Annual turnover | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Japan (JRA) | ~$23.4bn | ¥3.506tn, 2025 — the largest single racing jurisdiction |
| Hong Kong | ~$18.4bn | HK$143.31bn, 2025/26 season, +3.2% |
| Australia | ~$17.6bn | A$27bn, 2022/23 — last nationally published figure |
| Great Britain | ~$14.3bn | £7.88bn online (Apr 2024–Mar 2025) plus retail and on-course |
| United States | ~$11.0bn | 2025 handle on US races |
| France (PMU) | ~$7.5bn | €6.44bn stakes, 2025 |
The structural problem
Unlike gaming, racing is contracting in most of its core markets:
- United States: handle fell to $11.03 billion in 2025 from $11.26 billion in 2024. Race days dropped 5.2% and the number of races fell below 30,000 for the first time since the 1950s.
- France: PMU stakes declined 3.3% in 2025 and the player base fell 5.7% to 3.3 million. The PMU has lost roughly half its customers over the past decade.
- Great Britain: online turnover on racing has fallen from £10.01bn to £7.88bn in three years, with affordability checks accelerating the decline.
- Japan and Hong Kong are the exceptions — both grew in 2025, and both operate the most sophisticated digital wagering products in the sport.
The pattern is consistent: where racing has modernised its digital product, the money has held. Where it has not, an ageing audience is being lost to online sports betting and other digital entertainment. That is the gap ROX is built for.
Non-fungible tokens
Non-fungible tokens are blockchain-based assets representing verifiable ownership of a specific item — an image, a video, an in-game asset, or a character.
The speculative NFT cycle that peaked in 2021 is over, and the current market should be described honestly. Total NFT trading volume fell to roughly $5.5 billion in 2025, down about 37% year on year, with total NFT market value declining from around $9 billion to $2.4 billion. Liquidity has concentrated in a smaller set of projects, and Ethereum has reasserted itself as the dominant chain for high-value trading. Volumes recovered somewhat in the first half of 2026, but on existing capital rather than new retail inflows.
What survived the contraction matters more than the headline decline. Collectibles priced purely on resale expectation lost most of their value. Assets with utility inside a live product — where the token does something for the holder — held up considerably better, and gaming-linked NFTs now represent the largest share of NFT transaction activity.
Why NFTs in ROX Games
Games have always contained collectible items: mounts, skins, equipment, trophies. NFTs let those items carry verifiable ownership and trade outside the game's own walls.
For ROX, the reasoning is specific rather than ideological:
- Ownership. A player who acquires an in-game asset owns it outright, with provable scarcity and provenance — which matters in a sport built on pedigree and bloodlines.
- Secondary markets. Both the player and ROX Games can benefit from open-market transactions in the asset, creating a revenue stream that does not depend on primary sales alone.
- Transparency. Racing outcomes and asset attributes are verifiable on-chain, addressing a long-standing trust problem in wagering-adjacent products.
- Settlement. Lower transaction costs and faster transfers than the legacy tote and bookmaking infrastructure.
The critical design constraint, learned from the 2022 collapse: the token has to be worth holding because of what it does in the game, not because someone else may pay more for it later.
Conclusion
Two markets, moving in opposite directions.
Gaming is a $201.6 billion market growing at roughly 5% a year toward $234 billion by 2028, with 3.58 billion players and its fastest growth in emerging mobile-first regions. Horse racing moves about $92 billion in wagering annually across its major jurisdictions, but its audience is ageing and turnover is declining everywhere except the two markets that have invested hardest in digital.
Racing has the heritage, the global recognition and the wagering culture. Gaming has the audience, the growth and the distribution. Nothing currently bridges them in a form a 25-year-old mobile player would choose.
ROX Games combines the two with blockchain-verified ownership and asset economics designed around utility rather than speculation — positioned not to ride a hype cycle, but to bring a declining 300-year-old sport a product its next generation of fans would actually play.
Sources
- Newzoo, Global Games Market Report, Q2 2026 update (2025 actuals and 2026–2028 forecast)
- Newzoo, Global Games Market player and regional data, 2025
- Japan Racing Association / JAIRS betting turnover, 2025
- Hong Kong Jockey Club, 2025/26 season results
- Racing Australia, Australian Racing Fact Book (national wagering last published for 2022/23)
- UK Gambling Commission / British Horseracing Authority, industry statistics 2024/25
- Equibase / The Jockey Club, US handle figures, 2025
- Autorité Nationale des Jeux (ANJ), French betting market report, 2025
- The Block, 2026 Digital Assets Outlook (NFT volume and market value)
Currency conversions to USD use mid-2026 rates. Australian figures are the most recent nationally published; Racing Australia has not released national wagering data since the 2022/23 season.