Can America Catch Up with the European Online Gambling Scene?
Many countries around the world, including the majority in Europe and Asia, offer many more gambling options than the USA.
But with sports betting expected to expand across the United States in the next few years, more lenient attitudes to other forms of gambling are also expected.
This could be good news for those involved in the online casino and slots industry, and also for players hoping for a greater choice of online gaming options.
However, this is not guaranteed, and it could be a while before US players have access to the kind of online wagering options available in Europe.
Let’s Discover More European Online Gambling Scene.
Doors open to online operators
Online gambling has been changing in the USA over the past couple of years.
With states now opening their doors to sports betting thanks to a 2018 Supreme Court ruling, the question on what the future holds for other forms of gambling in the state has also been raised.
Previously, Nevada was the only state where bettors could wager on single sports event outcomes making the region a gambling hotspot as well as a top travel destination for tourists.
But that could all change as other forms of gambling become more common across the USA.
A multi-billion-dollar industry
It is estimated that Americans have been wagering billions of dollars a year on online gambling, including casinos and slots, making it a huge industry.
With some well-known European-based operators now entering the market, it has been predicted that the US online wagering market could soon become the biggest in the world.
Europe and Asia offer a glimpse of the future
To get an idea of what online wagering could look like in the US in the future, we only have to look at Europe and Asia. In those regions, most sports betting companies also feature casinos, slots, and poker on their websites.
It remains to be seen how they will approach the US market, but the desire to provide slot games and casino options alongside their sports betting products are already plain to see.
With the majority of wagering expected to be carried out via mobile devices in the future, a countrywide solution may be required.
Punters can already access some mobile casinos, and slot sites, so widespread online gambling is already taking place.
For example, if you are based in the USA, you can click here to play slot games for real money, with hundreds of titles available on the site in question.
With so many big-name operators now looking to enter the US market, it seems inevitable that online gambling will expand beyond sports betting to other areas, including casinos, slot machines, and poker.
The New Jersey model
As well as looking at Europe for inspiration, many companies will be looking closer to home at the likes of New Jersey for a model of how online gaming can be implemented successfully.
Live sites have been available in the state since 2013. And it now has the largest regulated online gaming market in the US.
New Jersey also showed how existing land-based casinos could partner with online providers, which dispelled the myth that online venues would hurt the business of land-based casinos.
In fact, the merger of the two has proved to be complementary, serving different profiles of customers and boosting the industry as a whole.
A Long Way to Go: European Online Gambling Scene
In reality, gaming in the USA is still way beyond the European market in terms of the modernization and implementation of gaming platforms.
But, just like the Europeans have had to adapt to overcome multiple challenges in different territories to produce a user-friendly product, the US market will have to follow their lead.
However, the continued separation of sports betting from other forms of gambling makes this difficult.
Step back 10 or 15 years, and the European bookmakers faced a similar issue: many sportsbooks and online casinos were run separately with different log-ins required for each section.
Today, each bookmaker offers a suite of gambling products on one website with just one log-in required.
This is more user-friendly and also allows for cross-promotion within different sections of the site.
For a country that likes to lead the way in so many areas, the USA is still a little behind the curve when it comes to online gambling.
While other countries are offering multiple gambling opportunities and accepting hundreds of payment options, including cryptocurrencies, many states in America are still struggling to move out of the comfort zone of their land and track-based wagering facilities.
Ultimately, a demonstration of the extra tax revenue that could be generated by the industry may be the most persuasive argument for widespread online wagering in the USA.
