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Concept
Online gambling
Summary
Online gambling 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 of 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 provide services or advertise to residents there. For example, 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, and, in Asia, 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.
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