“Broadband Fuels Online Gambling Boom”
Internet gambling is becoming an increasingly popular
activity across Europe and the trend is being encouraged
by the ever-increasing availability of broadband technology.
For example, in February alone, approximately 14 million
Europeans visited a gambling and sweepstake Internet
site, with France and Sweden registering as the countries
with the highest number of Internet gamblers. While Internet
gambling is catching on in the south of Europe, it is
still much less popular. Only 10 percent of the population
in Spain or Italy, for example, has visited a gambling
or sweepstakes site.
Britain is another country that has been hit by online
gambling fever, with the increasing availability of broadband,
once again, fueling the Internet gambling industry’s
growth. The Internet research company, Nielsen/NetRatings,
reports that 3.2 million Brits visited a gambling site
in February. This amounts to a 45% increase more than
the number of gambling site visitors than last year at
the same time.
According to the Nielsen/NetRatings, range of gambling,
betting, and online casino sites has spurred the phenomenal
growth in the UK’s gambling industry, although
the National Lottery remains the most popular gambling
site. In the month of February, 2005 over 1.3 million
visitors accessed the National Lottery Site. Nielsen/NetRatings
did a study of the top Internet gambling websites accessed
by UK gamblers and their results were as follows:
The National Lottery
William Hill
Partypoker.com
Ladbrokes
Pacific Poker
Cyberslotz
The Gaming Club
Golden Palace Online Casino
Vernons
Gabrielle Prior, an Internet analyst for Europe, said that
survey results taken earlier indicate that UK gamblers
like the speed and convenience of betting online. Three
quarters of the online gamblers in the UK use high speed
Internet and spend an average of 20 minutes online. Users
with slower connections spend an average of 29 minutes
online.
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