Online casinos have come a long way in their 20-year history, and in 2016 the experience of playing at the leading sites is more immersive, exciting, and varied than ever before.
Two decades of development and innovation followed the online casino phenomenon’s tentative first steps back in 1996, when the first real money wager was played at a site with 18 casino games in total.
Two decades later, thousands of online casino destinations have since launched, and millions of players around the world have turned the online casino sector into one that claims a significant chunk of global gambling market revenues every year.
This success has been built on constant innovation and the careful shaping of a gambling experience that might once have attempted to emulate the atmosphere and excitement of land based casinos, but now offers players advantages and benefits that have earned online casinos an audience all of their own.
Going live
For over a decade, online casinos lacked an edge that players could only find by going into a land based casino – the interaction with live dealers and hosts.
While broadband technology was still being developed and improved, there simply wasn’t the bandwidth to support live dealers, and top destinations were still developing an audience big enough and profitable enough to make it worth their while to invest in the resources required to offer live dealers.
Now, players have come to expect live casino experiences online as a standard option, and live rooms are amongst the most popular at casino destinations everywhere.
Flexible payment options
One of the main hurdles online casinos had to overcome in order to achieve the staggering levels of engagement from players all over the globe was that of payment security and flexibility.
In the early days of online gambling, players were reluctant to deposit at sites where it was difficult to know exactly where the transaction was being handled, and whether the site was genuine and reputable.
Since then, payment security has improved dramatically and the option to use various online payment handlers, such as WorldPay have put the power back in the hands of the players. Sites like Vegas Casino also offer players the option to make payments at the click of a button using the online currency BitCoin.
It is rare that cases of unscrupulous behaviour by online casino sites are heard of, and when they are, the community of online gamblers quickly outs the culprits and ensures they are held to account.
Casinos that never close
One of the biggest developments to shape the fate of online casinos in their short history was the arrival of slick mobile gaming software.
It isn’t so long ago that online casino operators were pondering the conundrum of how to translate their engaging, classic games onto a mobile format. But now sites cater for users of iPhone, Android, Blackberry.
The option to log on and play casino games from anywhere has been nothing short of revolutionary, and it is now every bit as common to see players on their morning commute to work playing a bit of mobile roulette as it is to see folks reading the paper on the tube.
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