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Long time Antigua-based online gambling site, often called the “first ever to launch”, is celebrating its 20th year online. The company itself has existed for 35 years.
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OnlineBetting.com offered up a great piece on the history of Intertops and how the company initially got its start.
Intertops got their start back in 1982 in Germany; it took less than a year for their founder and owner Detlef Train (pictured top right) to run into challenges with authorities. His solution wasn’t to quit bookmaking, but rather in 1983 he moved to London and obtained a British bookmaker license. The purpose of this license was to set up a phone-in betting shop that marketed to his home country (Germany). Perhaps Detlef Train wasn’t the first to execute such a plan, but as far as documented sports betting history goes, he was the first to obtain licensing and safe haven in one country for the purpose of marketing in another where bookmaking was illegal.
During Intertops early years in London, UK punters could place their bets in any Intertops office. The larger portion of their business came from German punters who in their home country were limited to betting with the Government’s monopoly. Considering Intertops offered better odds and more markets, many Germans opened and funded Intertop accounts via post which then allowed them to make telephone wagers. The UK operation remained small and merely a cover for their German post which also attracted a large number of Scandinavian punters.
During Mr. Detlef Trains first eight years in London, many American bookies executed similar plans, BetOnline landed in Panama while others ended up in Belize, Venezuela, Dominican, Costa Rica, Jamaica and Antigua. With pressure coming in from both the US and German governments, UK officials were not quite sure how to handle this grey area. This led to a legislative proposal that would restrict licensees from engaging in cross-border trade. Not one to wait around, Detlef Train moved his operation to Austria in 1992.
An 18-year-old Simon Noble would get his start in the Intertops London bookmaking office and would ultimately help to develop their Internet gambling arm after a move to Austria. Intertops found its Web home in the Caribbean island of Antigua where it remains today.
More from OnlineSportsBetting.com:
The innovations over the year have been many. Intertops was an early client of Microgaming, integrating its casino software to their website in 1998. In 2003 they partnered with PartyPoker.com and began operating a shared player skin. Once this occurred, Intertops was quick with press releases declaring themselves the first company to offer sports betting, casino and poker seamlessly from a single website. This statement is only partially true. Technically speaking, Bodog was the first seamless 3-product site, but their initial poker room was horrible and eventually scrapped (a year later a stable poker room was added to Bodog.com). Intertops wasn’t the first, they were just the first “relevant” seamless online betting site; doing it with a much fancier casino than the competition and a poker site that shared the title “world’s largest”.
The company is celebrating with a $210,000 Spring Fun casino bonus contest, which continues until 23 April.
"It's hard to believe, but it was 20 years ago this week that we took the first real money wager in our online casino," said Intertops' casino manager. "We'd been taking sports bets before that, but we launched our first casino games in 1998. We've come a long way since then, and we're proud that so many of our regular players have stayed with us so long."
Celebrating 20 years of bringing fun and excitement to online casino players around the globe, Intertops Casino offers hundreds of games from Realtime Gaming.
- Aaron Goldstein, Gambling911.com
