The History of Online Casinos
Online casinos has been around for years, but from there we have come a long way to its current sophisticated level, where the standard of industry is measured in terms of social gambling, mobile accessibility and huge jackpots. Today online casinos allow everything to wager through clients.
In todays online casinos, Novelty and cultural betting are the new terms and on the rise.
According to the infographic – Online gambling has shown immense growth and emerged into a $35 billion annual market and this infographic, published by online casino community RightCasino.com.
So, how did the online gambling industry get started?
It all started back in 1994 when Antigua and Barbuda opened its door for this business and passed the Free Trade & Processing Zone Act. Microgaming was the first ever company which developed first gambling software in 1994 itself.
In the year 1995, encrypted communication protocols were developed to ensure secure financial transactions. It was cryptologic follow up, done in order to secure the transactions. intercasino was the first casino to attribute the first money wager, where 18 games were offered and access to National Indian lottery.It all happened in the year 1996. In the same year to regulate and license online casinos, The Kahnawake Gaming Commision was formed.
Online casinos rapidly took a hold of the industry.In 1998- Cash splash was introduced by the Microgaming , it was the first ever progressive slot Jackpot.In the same year , The Planetrpoker became the first internet poker room. Due to its amazing and fast growth, by the end of 1998
There were over 700 real money online casinos were in existence.
Online casinos seen the boom in the year 2000, online casinos were generating $2.2 billion in revenues, where two third of the total was contributed by the US players.By the year 2001, gambling goes global as UK territories began to offer licenses. There were now 8 million online players. But did you know the Cassava Enterprises set up the 888.com after the lucky numbers in Chinese?
It was the year 2005, when online gambling reached its peak.This was the time when initial public offerings were registered by the partygaming, 888.com and playtech.
By 2006 the USA passed the UIGEA (a blow to the US gambling market) – making it illegal for banks and payment processors to process transactions. This forced many international operators out of the US market, although to this day it’s easy to find reputable casinos accepting American customers.
Online casinos earned worldwide gambling revenue $21 billion by 2008 estimated by the H2 gambling Capital. Today there are hundreds of casinos accepting bets on the Internet and many are accessible on mobile devices. By the year 2010, there were about 865 online casinos.
At this point the industry continues to innovate, adding techniques unheard never before.It was the year of mergers when Partygaming merged with Bwin to form the world largest publicly traded gambling company.
April 2011 was declared Black Friday as US government banned many poker sites for violation of UIGEA, although it was a blow for the whole gaming industry. 2013-This was the era for new frontiers and new technologies where mobile gambling and social gambling has been all of the rage and boomed the industry. At present, 85 countries have legalized online gambling.
