It might seem that offline and online gambling differs like playing FIFA and real soccer. Although it is not true when you dive deeper into the topic. In fact, the Internet has made the breakthrough view on the industry with wide access to wider groups of people. But have you ever thought of how and when online gambling was born, and how the websites used to look like? People nowadays take many things for granted and think that the luxurious and elegant CasinoChan Australia has basically popped out of nowhere. But let’s take a journey through the history of online gambling and go back to the nineties.
The first country to ever legalize online gambling was Antigua and Barbuda. A Caribbean country passed an act of 1994 to provide licenses to online casinos. At that time, few online gambling websites were first created. This coincided with the time when software providers for online casinos also appeared. Some of those companies still successfully operate even today and create new software for gambling websites all over the world.
As the industry of online gambling was steadily growing, countries like Canada started to realize the scale of it. Canada established a body to control issuing licenses for online casinos. The country understood that suppressing is not an option as it was already clear that it was going to become extremely popular in no time. So they decided to make locals follow laws and control the operation of them.
If you are old enough, you sure do remember how bad and slow the Internet connection was back then. That was one of the main factors to slow down the thriving of online gambling. But as the technologies were developing, the industry was growing and becoming more complex and advanced. And in 1998 it was already worth almost a billion dollars, which seemed a crazy amount of money for a relatively new phenomenon.
But development did not take place without any incidents. For example, in 2005, the US government wanted to ban the provision of online casino services on their territory from other countries. But fortunately, it never came too far and did not become a law. Nevertheless, some countries were not aware of this and simply did not allow US citizens to play until a certain point. Nowadays, many believe that the US should fully legalize and tax these websites, which will be a great bonus for the economy. In Europe, the situation is better, but all the same, the governments of the countries have the right to refuse to issue a license to one or another online casino. To understand the scale of the industry today, it must be said that the largest online casinos are already listed on stock exchanges. Aside from Europe, South Africa took a step towards the industry and finally endorsed online casinos.
In conclusion, it should be said that the industry is constantly growing. With the recent boom of the COVID-19 pandemic, more and more people are becoming involved in online gambling. More and more countries are legalizing online casinos, thereby earning money for their own treasury and promoting responsible gambling. Despite all the convenience of online gambling, this is also a big blow to traditional casinos. This means they will have to find new and enticing ways to attract people.