Copyright Ian Pearson, BT Futurologist

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The future of gambling

Feb 1999

Interactive gambling (via PC or TV) has the same market size as advertising, half as much as electronic shopping, according to Datamonitor. They say that at 17.5% of the total consumer interactive service revenue, it will reach $4Bn per year in Europe by 2002, compared to $8Bn for electronic shopping, and will mostly be internet based. Internet gambling is already making significant impacts in revenues in the physical world. However, internet gambling is much harder to police. People can make use of web anonymity to avoid rules within their own countries that may prohibit certain activities. They can access gambling activities anywhere in the world, and presumably deposit their winnings in accounts outside their usual tax domain.

A few seconds searching reveals that there are many sites that are effectively online casinos, with a wide range of activities available. These sites often mimic the appearance of the real casinos. They use high quality graphics and gimmicks to provide an exciting virtual environment. The user can easily be made to feel as if they are in a real casino. Of course, video can actually allow real footage of real casinos to be used as part of the virtual environment, either live or recorded. In the future, it will be possible to produce virtual gamblers and companions to make such sites even more compelling, even if the user is the only one at the site. Virtual betting shops can be linked directly to live footage of sporting events and so on just like real betting shops.

These virtual casinos and betting shops lend themselves to virtual world technology, where imagination rules. Physical properties of materials are no barrier to the appearance of a virtual ebnvironment, where physics is optional. The most elaborate architectures and frills, the most attractive 'guests', and of course attractive staff could be offered even by the humblest virtual casino. In cyberspace, there is also the opportunity to link people together to make it more of a social activity. Of course, this can be used to offer extra dimensions to real casinos as well as offer interactivity between gamblers online. With this new excitement enhancing potential offered by technology, we can only expect the market to increase as this happens.