“Trends: Hot or Not”

Begun during the dot-com explosion of the 90s, the online gambling industry has begun seeing record growth in recent years and financial analysts are predicting that this year will be the industry’s biggest year yet.

A confluence of events, such as technological advances in broadband and wireless services, America’s love affair with Poker, and the growing acceptability of online gambling, have all contributed toward the success of online gambling sites and their resulting huge revenues. This year, projected revenues are for $10 billion, which is a 40 percent increase from just last year. Such large revenues mean that online gambling is one of the Web’s most successful moneymakers. Online Poker alone is expected to bring in over two billion dollars and to see more than one million new players each month.

Americans have long been obsessed with the game of Poker and evidence gathered by gaming site CasinoCity ( www.casinocity.com) underpins this. According to Casinocity, in 2003 Americans played at approximately 53 Poker web sites, but that number is now at 266.

While the improved peer-to-peer and wireless technology as well as the general public’s growing trust in online casinos and the more mainstream image of online gambling, tends to favor the industry’s road to success, legal obstacles to its success still remain. For example, online gambling is still illegal in some states in the U.S. and Congress has been trying for several years now to make it illegal in all states. Also, banks are generally discouraged from allowing their credit cards to be used for online betting. Furthermore, Jon Kyl, a Senator from Arizona, is trying to make it illegal to use Internet technology to place bets in much the same way that the Federal Wire Act of 1961 made it illegal to use phone lines for placing

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