The gambling industry in the UK has grown tremendously over the years. At this point, gambling affects the UK economy significantly. This form of entertainment is popular with many gamblers, especially after it became available online, on every device, and at any location.
Nowadays, if you enjoy gambling, you can play online and claim various bonuses without having to spend a fortune. Those on a limited budget can easily find a 1 pound deposit casino to gamble at, while high rollers can enjoy very rewarding VIP programs at top-rated casinos.
But, it wasn’t always this way. The history of gambling in the UK is impressive and very rich. In this article, you will learn how UK has developed the online gambling market and where it stands today.
UK Online Gambling Then and Now
The first online casino available to UK players was opened in 1994. At the time, the website offered a limited number of basic games and enjoyed little popularity. Within a few years and thanks to technology advances, there were 200+ casinos similar to the first one, and their interface was much more advanced.
Gambling became more popular almost instantly. The first big change happened in 2005 when the UK created its Gambling Act, allowing casinos to advertise and offer their services legally within the borders of the United Kingdom.
The Act in question became active in 2007. A year later, the gambling market value in the country reached over 8.36 million pounds. What started as a single, small Microgaming casino in 1994 swiftly turned into thousands of casino sites offering thousands of gaming choices for players. Today, you’ll be spoilt with choices, and might even struggle with deciding where to play and what bonus to claim.
At the beginning, people didn’t frequent such websites often. Cryptologic took a big part in attracting gamblers to play online by offering them a special transaction system. With the growth of casinos and games, the temptation became even bigger.
The beginning of this century marked a fast spread of online gambling. The world welcomed virtual reality as part of gambling as casinos took advantage of this new technology. Soon enough, there were more casinos than you could count, and the competition became fierce.
With the growth in competition grew the advantages for players. Nowadays, you can get all sorts of perks just for joining a new casino website, not to mention for playing on it regularly.
Casinos started offering tremendous bonuses up to thousands of dollars to their customers, implementing loyalty programs for their high-rollers, and introducing new games on a regular basis. Nowadays, when you open a casino website, you’ll be spoilt with choice of features, games, and promotions.
At a time when we are dealing with a pandemic, searches for online gambling in the UK and the world have reached an all-time high. People love to play casino games and there’s no shortage for choices if you are in this country.
Current Numbers in the UK Gambling Industry
In the past, one of the reasons why players weren’t fans of gambling online is because this wasn’t regulated in any way. In 2008 when the UKGC or UK Gambling Commission was founded, this changed entirely. Today, only UKGC licensed casinos can operate within the country, and the commission controls and audits every site that holds its license.
This results in massive gambling within the borders of the UK. The UKGC has released a new report that shows the growth in esports betting since the pandemic. According to that report, the year-on-year increase jumped an unexpected 2992%.
Since gambling is more secure than ever and the advantages are tremendous, the industry’s value is growing as we speak. Almost half of the UK population plays casino games or has played them at some point. Over 30% of Brits play once a month, which equals over 25 million gamblers that play casino games on a regular basis.
Nowadays, the yield of online casino games is very similar to that of other forms of betting. For UK players, Bingo remains the most played game with over 200 million pounds in the gambling yield per year.
Seeing how the numbers grow for casino gambling, we can only expect this industry to come much closer to the yield of bingo in the years that follow.
Wrapping Up
UK gamblers have plenty of choices for gambling online these days. UKGC-licensed websites are available to all players of legal age, and the interest in this activity has led to the creation of many sites that offer such services. UK is one of the biggest gambling markets in the world, and it doesn’t seem to stop growing. We can only expect this trend to grow in the future right alongside new technologies and new games.