If you’ve navigated to this website and are reading this article, it’s fair to say you’re pretty familiar with the internet, this incredible network of billions of websites containing vast amounts of useful (and useless) information. Twenty years ago, even as some of us used the early internet for the first time, did any of us predict where we would be now?
Many industries have been transformed by the ubiquitous nature of the internet; new industries have spring upon the back of the network, some of which have thrived and some of which have subsequently disappeared. One industry which seems to have been tailor-made for the internet is the casino business.
Online Poker in full flow
The online casino business is now gigantic – it’s worth billions of dollars every year to the merchant websites, to the affiliates and of course to the minority of players who make a profit at Poker, Blackjack, Online Roulette or whatever is their game of choice. This industry acts as something of a poster child for the effectiveness of transferring your business online. So how did we get here?
Back in the mid-1990s westernised countries began to improve their networks, taking advantage of new technologies to upgrade their networks. This provided a faster, stable network which opened up a whole range of new possibilities for software developers. Video games could now be played online and real time contact could be sustained between internet users on opposite sides of the world.
Into this sandbox stepped a few pioneering gambling websites offering basic versions of Poker, Craps, Free Keno and the like. Added to this was the important ability to deposit money at these websites, enabling the players to wager real cash against each other. These small introductory steps were all the casino industry needed to start an industry which is now gigantic.
So why is it so popular? The obvious answer is that not everyone lives near a casino and it provides those poker players with a way to play their favourite game whenever they want. They can play with stakes as tiny or as gigantic as they wish with as much anonymity as they want. Arguably the ease of which casino gaming can now be pursued means that those who may not have been tempted in the past now have the chance to try out a range of games. Whether that’s a good thing or not can only be a personal choice.