Gambling has received a strong boost with the development of the web, where the software has evolved rapidly. On a technical level, the Web has been around since the 1960s, but it was so primitive and so few people had access to it that for most people it didn’t even exist. That all changed in the early 1990s when cheap personal computers and the accessible web took over the market and lured the consumer in.
With such a wide customer base, gambling has flourished vastly.
The first online casino games became available in 1995, mainly as a result of the Free Trade Act that was passed in the Caribbean. The growth of online gambling has been strong, with revenues rising from $300 million (more by some estimates) in 1997 to almost $11 billion in 2006. Concerns about online consumer protection led to the passage of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement by the US Congress in 2006. This legislative act was intended to regulate payment systems in the field of gambling, but in fact it only slowed down the development of the entire industry.
But in the end, such a “cleansing” made it possible to bring the business to another high-quality level and the industry continued its development.
It’s hard to believe that the online casino industry is less than 20 years old. There are now over 2,000 gambling websites, including online casinos. The total revenue from fun gaming websites is approximately $16 billion.
If such growth rates continue, then the industry is expected to flourish in the future.