Gambling News

“Online Gambling Soars”

Britain has been bitten by the Internet gambling bug. Four percent of British adults have tried it!

A quick look at the development of online gambling supports a forecast of phenomenal growth. In 1996 there were only thirty online gambling sites with annual revenues of 30 million dollars. Since that time, however, the online gambling industry has exploded, with the number of Poker web sites now roughly at two thousand and revenues having catapulted to a whopping 9.2 billion dollars annually. Half of this comes from the United States. Of course, this increased opportunity to gamble with such ease and convenience translates into some hefty total losses for the gamblers.

Britain too has been bitten by the Internet gambling bug, according to a recent report, published by investment bank Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, in a report on online gambling. The Gaming Board of Great Britain, who oversees casinos within the United Kingdom, says that approximately four percent of British adults have gambled over the Internet in the last two years, and that number is expected to increase as online gambling becomes more acceptable and mainstream.

Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein also estimate that gamblers lost some $237 billion to gaming companies worldwide and are expected to lose about $277 billion a year by the year 2008.

Presently, betting on sports is responsible for nearly half of the Internet gambling activity, while other types of gambling account for about 32 percent. Industry analysts believe that the high percent of sports betting is largely due to the advances in Internet, broadband and cellular technology, which allows gamblers to place their bets by cell phone or on hand-held computers.

Analysts also see tremendous potential for growth in online Poker, due mainly to the American obsession with the game. Poker is also a game that is popular all over the world. Online Poker could even surpass sports betting by the year 2008. According to Sportingbet, which just recently bought Paradise Poker, the biggest provider of Poker sites on the web, the market value of online Poker is currently about 1.5 billion dollars, but all evidence indicates that this value will be seeing a marked increase in the not too distant future.

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