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The first independent gambling guide to the best online
casinos!
United Kingdom Bets Big on Online
Casinos
The United Kingdom
hopes, that by legalizing online casinos and internet gambling, betting
companies and online casinos will come in from offshore, and thus bring
tax revenues to the country.
Online casinos have enjoyed unbelievable growth on the Internet in
recent years, and this explosive expansion has come with much scrutiny
and has created an incredibly crowded marketplace, as online casinos
spring up left and right. But the current state of online casinos is
healthy and ripe with new developments and news. The industry is always
exciting despite mainstream society’s recent reservations, and now, the
United Kingdom has decided to jump on the online casinos bandwagon.
The latest research on online casinos shows that there are still
substantial growth opportunities in the online casinos industry in
months and years to come. As online casinos become more ‘legitimate,’
Britain hopes to bring increased revenue to the country.
People in Britain are going crazy over online casinos. Newspaper stands
are crammed with gambling magazines and the national daily newspapers
have devoted sections to online casinos and games of chance, including
poker and other games. Britain even opened up the world’s first casino
college this year, where young trainees can learn the tricks of online
casinos and land based casinos. Now, the British government hopes to
become the global hub of online casinos.
Parliament has enacted sweeping new legislation that will open up the
online gmaing and entertainment market, starting next year, to
traditional casino games such as poker, blackjack, and roulette. Britons
already play such games by the millions, but the companies offering them
are based in offshore tax havens such as Gibraltar, the Channel Islands,
and Costa Rica. The government hopes that by becoming the first country
in the developed world to legalize online gambling, it can lure offshore
outfits to locate on British soil and pump even more revenues into
public coffers.
It’s a huge opportunity for online casinos, but one with huge upside,
since Britons wager millions and millions of dollars per year at
casinos.
British investors also are into the idea. They are obviously attracted
by the more favorable regulatory environment, and some online gambling
firms are already listed on the London Stock Exchange. "Britain is
already the global leader in betting and now it looks likely to become
the world capital of Internet gambling as well," says Professor Leighton
Vaughan Williams, director of the betting research unit at Nottingham
Trent University.
But the USA is still the place to be, according to some experts. An
online gambling company's CEO, Nigel Payne, calculates that if Internet
gambling were legal in the U.S., it would have generated $1.2 billion in
tax revenues in 2004. "If the U.S. regulates this industry, we will set
up there and gladly pay tax," he says.
"If legislation passes, the U.S. has wiped out any chance of
capitalizing on what is becoming one of the world's fastest growing and
most lucrative businesses," says Nottingham Trent's Vaughan Williams.
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