Online gambling

Online gambling (also known as iGaming or iGambling) is any kind of gambling conducted on the internet. This includes virtual poker, casinos, and sports betting. The first online gambling venue opened to the general public was ticketing for the Liechtenstein International Lottery in October 1994. Today, the market is worth around $40 billion globally each year, according to various estimates.

Many countries restrict or ban online gambling. However, it is legal in some states of the United States, some provinces in Canada, most countries in the European Union, and several nations in the Caribbean.

In many legal markets, online gambling service providers are required by law to have some form of license to provide services or advertise to residents there. Examples of such authorities include the United Kingdom Gambling Commission or the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board in the US.

Many online casinos and gambling companies around the world choose to base themselves in tax havens near their main markets. These destinations include Gibraltar, Malta, and Alderney in Europe. In Asia, online gambling is legal in the Philippines with the Philippine Amusement & Gaming Corporation or PAGCOR as the regulator while the Special Administrative Region of Macau was long considered a tax haven and known base for gambling operators in the region. However, in 2018, the EU removed Macau from their list of blacklisted tax havens.

In 1994, Antigua and Barbuda passed the Free Trade & Processing Act, allowing licences to be granted to organisations applying to open online casinos. Before online casinos, the first fully functional gambling software was developed by Microgaming, an Isle of Man-based software company. This was secured with software developed by CryptoLogic, an online security software company. Safe transactions became viable; this led to the first online casinos in 1994.

1996 saw the establishment of the Kahnawake Gaming Commission, which regulated online gaming activity from the Mohawk Territory of Kahnawake and issues gaming licences to many of the world's online casinos and poker rooms. This is an attempt to keep the operations of licensed online gambling organisations fair and transparent.

In the late 1990s, online gambling gained popularity; there were only 15 gambling websites in 1996, but that had increased to 200 websites by the following year. A report published by Frost & Sullivan revealed that online gambling revenues had exceeded $830 million in 1998 alone. In the same year, the first online poker rooms were introduced. Soon afterward in 1999, the Internet Gambling Prohibition Act was introduced as a bill in the US Senate; it would have meant that a company could not offer any online gambling product to any US citizen. But it did not pass. Multiplayer online gambling was also introduced in 1999.

In 2000, the first Australian federal government passed the Interactive Gambling Moratorium Act, making it illegal for any online casino not licensed and operating before May 2000 to operate. This meant Lasseter's Online became the only online casino able to operate legally in Australia; however, they cannot take bets from Australian citizens.