How many UK casinos offer online gambling?
Betting is such an interesting entertainment enjoyed by many people all over the globe. A number of people gamble by heading to their local bookies, this has always been a long-lasting past time.
The rise of online betting has rocketed from just a few major players to websites by the bucket load. It all started with plans in the late 80's by the major betting companies expanding their business. In the days of 56k modems and very slow internet connections (which was somewhat a luxury), betting companies only dreamed of offering betting sevices online, but didn't rule it out all together. With the advances of technology came faster broadband, and as popularity grew, so did the bookies interest to offer the ability to bet online.
Now when online gambling started, it was only offered by the big name companies and services were very limited in the sense that you could only bet online on horses and football. The companies slowly introduced more sports to bet on and eventually expanded in to casino gambling. Casino games had always been seperate from betting. You got bookies offering sports betting, and you got casinos offering games such as roulette. No one ever thought of combining the two, until the introduction of 'online gaming'.
The transition was slow but inevitible. Now there are bookies offering casino games, and casinos offering betting services. A massive merge under the umbrella of "online gaming".
But just how many UK casinos are there offering gambling online in the 21st century?
Research projects over the past 5 years show that 1 in 5 punters don't gamble online. These people are still heading to their local betting shop to have a flutter on the horses, or footy. That means an astonishing 4 in 5 betting punters now have an online betting account and are enjoying fast action betting and gambling with online casinos and bookmakers. The survey took place in the UK and 20,000 of the genral public were asked. However, this doesn't mean to say that they don't visit the betting shops for betting and games such as roulette on the arcade style machines, it just means that these people are also registered with a bookie online. They may alternate or combine the two during a week of betting.
So what are the figures?
The survey that was carried out estimated that there are over 10 betting shops per city or major county, and estimated that there are 4 casinos per city on average across the UK, excluding Northern Ireland.
Most of the casinos are owned or branches of a major brand, apart from the few independent ones. So the survey revealed that out of the approx. 320 casinos, half of these had an online presence offering games and entertainment gambling online. Brands included, Boyles Sport, Ladbrokes, William Hill, Gala Casinos, Genting Casinos and more.
The survey also revealed that out of the approx. 800 betting shops or bookmakers, 70% of these had an online presence that offered online gamling and betting.
The graph shows results over the 5 year period and the range of participants. It also shows the increase in gambling since the late 80's and early 90's.
Ed Green is a research analyst and provider of entertainment statistics in the UK and across some other European countries. He works closely with a number of gambling comparison sites including OnlineGaming4u to provide useful information across a broad range of industry types. You can contact him personally on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.
