The Development of the Online Betting Industry from 1994 to Today

We usually start these types of articles with impressive stats on how well the Internet gambling sector is doing. Trust us, it is doing more than fine, proliferating year on year, with some consulting research firms putting its expansion pace at over 10% per year. For example, Mordor Intelligence estimates that this landscape will continue swelling at 11.65% per year until 2029. While it is accurate that this industry is expanding quite quickly, we do not put too much stock in these predictions, as they keep changing from year to year. Different companies use different metrics, so it is a bit hard to take one of their guesses as truer than others. What is undoubtedly correct is that this sphere is stretching, which is evident by the fact that more and more countries are legalizing this hobby for their citizens to enjoy.

Despite this current situation, we must point out that this industry has not had a smooth ride to get to where it is today. It has had its growing pains, and in this article, we look to tell you about it and how it got to where it is now. So, let’s explore this topic in detail below.

The Birth of Online Sports Betting

If not for Internet gambling, much fewer people would have heard of the island nation of Antigua and Barbuda. It is a sovereign Caribbean country consisting of two islands, Barbuda and Antigua, lying at the conjuncture of the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea. Columbus surveyed this area in 1493, and its modern economy is chiefly dependent on tourism. Looking to rake in some extra cash, it government passed the Free Trade and Processing Zone Act in 1994, a law establishing a special economic zone where businesses can operate under different regulatory rules than the rest of the country. That opened the door for foreign entities to offer remote betting services from Antigua and Barbuda to people living outside of it after getting licensed by its Directorate of Offshore Gaming. Once this Caribbean nation pulled this move, other regions followed suit, looking to explore this newly available sector for economic growth.

Sadly, it is hard to figure out which was the Internet’s initial betting platform. Various historical discrepancies exist on this topic. Hence, it is impossible to pinpoint which was the first site to feature online sports betting. Many sources claim that this was Intertops in 1996. Yet, we know that platforms like BetUS (which we have reviewed) have been running since 1994.

What we know for certain is that after Antigua and Barbuda started regulating betting and gaming sites in 1996, Curacao began doing the same, and the Mohawk Territory of Kahnawake in Canada established its Kahnawake Gaming Commission, which made a name for itself as the licensor of many notable virtual poker rooms.

It was during the mid-1990s that the basic structure of online sportsbooks began to take shape. The early platforms offered fundamental options, like money line, point spread, and over/under bets. They tried to mirror their Vegas land-based counterparts, but they were a far cry from modern remote bookmakers. They were still pretty good, with the main problem they faced revolving around gamblers seeing them as untrustworthy. The late 1990s marked an era of significant growth and development for these platforms, and as the 2000s rolled around, they began featuring more variety in all departments.

The 2000s Era

Without question, the early 2000s were a transformative period for online betting. First off, the start of this decade saw the emergence of payment methods created distinctively to cater to this industry. Of course, the most famous examples are Neteller and Skrill, known as Moneybookers back then. When Neteller launched, it quickly gained a substantial foothold in this arena, with as much as 95% of its revenues coming from the online gambling sector, as it was processing transactions for somewhere in the neighborhood of 85% of the world’s Internet gambling merchants.

Thanks to the late 1990s dot-com boom, there was a swift expansion of Internet-based businesses during the end of the 1990s and the beginning of the 2000s, which fueled investment in Internet technology and infrastructure. We have talked about Fulham FC teaming up with Betfair in 2003, which was the first sizeable online sports betting sponsorship of a top sports team.

We should not fail to mention that mobile betting became a thing in 2000 when Intertops accepted the first wager made via a mobile phone. By 2003, top UK brands like William Hill and Ladbrokes offered this feature through text-based interfaces and Wireless Application Protocol technology.

In the 2000s, the UK, Italy, and Spain decided to legalize remote wagering, and many Americans were using offshore websites based in countries like Panama, Curacao, and Antigua. Yet, the passage of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) in 2006 marked a pivotal moment in how Americans could bet on sports over the World Wide Web, as this law prohibited financial institutions from processing gambling transactions. That effectively stopped many operators from offering their services to US residents or looking for alternative ways to do so, narrowing their reach in this essential market.

Nevertheless, the 2000s marked a trend of gambling sponsorship deals, and online betting is here to stay and will only expand. This decade also introduced live betting, high-end security, and interface options that are now standard. It was a period of substantial growth and innovation for this industry.

From the 2010s to Today

Most of the features we now see and crave at online bookies appeared at the start of the 2010s. From what we know, crypto gambling on casino games showed up online in either 2011 or 2012, depending on who you choose to believe. But Bitbook.ag was probably the Web’s initial crypto sportsbook, opening its virtual doors in 2013, paving the way for this realm as we know it today.

Naturally, PASPA fell in 2018 in the US, which allowed states to regulate online betting, and before and after this event, in the 2010s, many other developed nations did the same, which led to the creation of loads of country-specific regulators founded by their nation’s governments and laws.

eSports wagering can be traced back to around 2010. Based on our research, the initial markets that got offered were on Counter Strike Global Offensive and StarCraft II contests. But, it was not until the mid-2010s, when gambling operators recognized the potential of this section of the sector, and brands like Pinnacle and Bet365 began listing eSports betting options for competitions like the League of Legends World Championship and The International (Dota 2).

Bitcoin betting started to gain more steam towards the end of the 2010s when predictive modeling in betting strategies gained traction. Then, operators also leaned heavily into leveraging the power of social media. In the COVID-19 crisis, virtual sports wagering notched an understandable spike in interest, and around this time, self-exclusion systems were slowly becoming normal in developed markets. The global pandemic, no doubt, had a profound impact on this industry, promoting changes in user behavior and market dynamics on multiple fronts, not only the responsible betting one. It accelerated the digital transformation.

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