This is a piece that will take you through some of the humble beginnings of online betting from Antigua to the current state and level of its sophistication. During these times, insane stunts from PR were taken and royal baby betting, as well as, endorsements in the industry happened often.

This online betting industry is worth in excess of $1 billion according to Statista which is a sum equal to the GDP of Netherlands.

A Journey on Online Betting

In 1994, Antigua and Barbuda approved of free Trade and Processing Zone Act which allowed offshore licences for online betting providers.

1996 saw intertops.com become the first sports book where a Finish puncture known as Jukka Honkavaara made the first wager and this was on a match between Tottenham Hotspurs and Hereford United. In this same year, The United States of America set a record in making wagers worth $60 Million on online gaming and betting platforms.

Activities and Growth of the Industry

It was in 1998 when Senator Jon Kyl brought to the floor and Internet Gaming Prohibition Act but the bill was not successful. The House of Representatives did not pass this bill in 2000 when it was presented again. It was in this same year when William Hill was launched as the first UK company offering online betting services. At this same period, a report was published by Frost & Sullivan and indicated that online gambling revenues made a top of $830 million.

As online betting was in its journey to grow; there was this doomsday prediction in 2000 where bookmarkers provided odds of 500-1 and the bet was that all real-world betting shops will comes to a close in 10 years. At this time, Europe saw another betting online store come to existence; Ladbrokes which was established by The Hilton Group. Another UK betting exchange by the name Betfair came to existence and they saw 36 bets on the first day. The company had a great time in their operations and in 2013, they registered an income of £70 million.

I would say that this evolution for online betting has come a long way and steadily. 2003 was when the first mobile betting platform was brought to action by sporting Index. This was the first UK mobile betting application. This same year reports were released by ORC International indicating that online betting had grown by 46% and offline betting from betting shops had gone up by 46%.

2004 saw the online betting fray joined by PaddyPower Sport.

2006 saw the USA ban betting after passing the UIGEA. This made it illegal for banks and companies offering credit to process any financial transaction related to betting sites. This saw a host of sites withdrawing from the market.

Graham Calvert lost £2 million at William Hill Casino in 2008 and sued them for this but he lose the lawsuit.

Technological advancements

Even though the US market was still unregulated, online sports betting wagers came to $50 billion in 2009.

2010 saw more celebrity endorsements after Ray Winstone “Sexy Beast” became the voice of bet365 advert campaign as he offered advice on live and in play odds.

From Statista betting it was found that the online sports betting market was worth $74 billion. This was in 2012. In 2013, Jason Neubauer launched YouBetMe and this was the first special networking betting application and it made it possible for members to bet against each other and not bookmarkers. This was the same year were match fixing madness came to play. Europol suspected the fixing o 380 European football matches and the illegal betting market that was fuelled by Asian crime syndicates which was estimated to be worth £306 billion.

2014 was when bitcoin came to play as a means of exchange and BetVIP was the first licensed bitcoin only sports book and launched just before the World Cup. SoftSwiss which was the Bitcoin Software company claimed that $10 million was the worth of wagers made each month.

2015 was when 11.1 million searches were made every month on Google for the term bet365 which was more than the 9 million searches Nike gets. At this point in time, online betting brings a contribution of $74 to $100 billion in the sports betting industry which is worth between $700 and $1,000 billion which is the same case with the GDP of Netherlands.

William Hill is one of the renowned UK gambling operators. Recently they pulled out from the Romanian Market. Punters were unable to continue with their betting endeavours from Tuesday 3rd June. This is after the company ceased their operations and suspended the Romanian accounts. They asked the players to make submissions of their winnings payouts.

All those webmasters who acted as the Romanian market affiliates were also instructed to get rid of banners and links which connected their sites to Romania. A Spokesperson for William Hill said that their actions were prompted by the developments around regulating the Romanian market.

A new online gambling framework is being institutionalised in Romania which is planned to attract a couple of international licensees. Last month, the government made announcements that they needed all license applicants to pay up back taxes worth 20% of all the winnings from their Romanian players dating back to 2009. William Hill’s exit follows what Ladbrokes did in January, as well as Bet365.

On May 28^th the president of Romania signed the new amendments to Government Bill 92/2014 which left the law to be published in the Official Journal for it to be put into effect. Interested operators have until the end of 2015 to send in their application to the National Gambling Office for the licenses.

On other news regarding William Hill, they ceased their offerings for their poker rake-back offers as from 1^st June. William Hill runs on Playtech’s iPoker network which prompted them to change to source-based rake model this year in February which was their model of rewarding skins for bringing in more players to their poker arena. For players who were on the rake-back deals will be switched to Hill’s VIP program.

Thanks to Inspired Gaming Group, Hills now has two new HTML5 mobile applications. These fascinating games include a Romanian themed omni-channel smash by the name Centurion which is at this time one of William Hills’ top 3 games. The other is the called Spirit of the Samurai which is a free spins slot. The SVP to the mobile section at William Hill; Dave Hammond said that he was excited with the performance of the two games which are exclusive to William Hill’s mobile platform.