Why Online Gambling is the most important thing to happen to the UK gaming industry in decades
I was the first to admit that online gambling was going to be the future of UK gaming. Back in 2005 I predicted that the government would ban online gambling before the year 2007. I was right – in fact online gambling was slot pragmatic officially banned before 2007. But online gambling didn’t die. It grew.
In fact it grew so much that it overtook UK land based gaming. Land based gaming grew from £1.2bn in 2002 to £3.6bn in 2006. But that growth was overtaken by online gaming which grew from £850m in 2002 to £2.1bn in 2006.
This was the largest increase in the UK gaming industry in 20 years.
With the ban on online gambling officially lifted in 2007, online gaming started to grow even more. By 2011 it was in the £4.1bn mark and has since reached the £6.5bn mark.
That’s more than 10 times what the UK gaming industry was worth back in 2002.
The reason online gambling grew so much is because it’s been the most significant and disruptive industry change that the UK gaming industry has seen in decades.
Online gambling offers online gaming companies a better business model than land based gaming. There are no fixed costs in land based gaming. It is virtually a free for all. But online gaming companies have to pay for servers, slot pragmatic hosting and licensing of software.
That means that online gaming companies are highly profitable compared to land based gaming companies.
In fact, online gambling is responsible for nearly a third of the total growth in the UK gaming industry in the last decade.
That’s a huge amount of growth.
The ban on online gambling actually slowed growth in the UK gaming industry.
As I said in my 2005 article, the government was right to ban online gambling in 2007, but it’s been a mistake to remove the ban.
In 2007 online gambling brought an end to the one industry that was actually growing. The government’s ban on online gambling stopped new online gaming companies from coming into the market.
The internet didn’t stop online gambling companies from doing business. They just had to find other ways to market online gaming.
One of the best ways to market online gaming is by using advertising. In fact, some of the most popular online gaming companies in the world make their money from advertising.