The leaves of the Christmas trees falling off, and the temperatures falling down even more, it must be New Year's - the time of year for summaries. Online casinos do not escape summaries either. As a matter of fact, the online casino industry has gone through so much in 2006 that a summary is really in place. Not every year sees a market rise to enormous dimensions in popularity and market value as online casinos have.
Early in 2006, online casinos were already a ten year old industry, stable, constantly growing and breaking records with $12 billion in revenues. It has gone through transformations and changes but has consistently overcome them. Perhaps its nature, based on chance and hope, fueled the optimism of the millions of online casinos gamblers who have joined sites around the Internet.
The optimism shared by so many one year ago also came from a demand made by the World Trade Organization, in mid-2005, that ordered the United States to open up the competition and allow online casinos located in Antigua and elsewhere around the world to compete with local online casinos over the American gambling crowd, the largest sector of gamblers in the world.
The came the tumultuous summer months, which opened with the July 12th House vote on the Gambling Enforcement Act. An exemption for politically untouchable sectors such as horse racing and lotteries was included to ease the passing of the law in the Senate as well. The uncertainty was increased with the public arrests of major online casinos executives. The first arrest, in July, was the first arrest by the American federal government of a non-American citizen. It was followed by another high profile arrest of an online casino executive. The signal was clear - the United States is out to ban online casinos and online casinos operators.
The market made an expected plunge in value, down by $6 billion. But regulation initiatives in the UK and a spread of online casinos in new markets around the world have given the industry a boost in action and hope as 2006 came to an end and 2007 looms around the corner. If 2006 saw online casinos go from highs to lows, and yet survive and emerge stronger, 2007 gives all of us hope at least for an exciting year to come.
Many Online Casino this year stopped working at the U.S. market but we already started to get the word that PartyGaming bought IOG Casinos and Noam Lanir's company Empire Online (TRADAL) and is already thinking of how to start working back in the U.S. market as deep as possible.
I hope We will have even a better year coming out in 2007.
We wish you Happy New Year from OnlineCasinoExtra.com
January 2, 2007, 5:33 pm (4 years ago)
Comments (0)
