 |  A crystal ball for online casinos?
9 Oct 2005
Are online casinos the wave of the future? Do they really stand a chance of ever seriously challenging the primacy of the land-based, or as it is known in the online gambling lingo, “brick and mortar” casinos? Without a doubt, online casinos offer players the convenience of being able to play games from the comfort of their home office, bedroom or living room, but at the end of the day – or perhaps, looking to the future, at the end of the decade – will online casinos ever be anything more than just a fringe sector of a very large gambling industry the world over?
Yes, online casinos are going public but offering shares does not necessarily indicate that a company will be around forever. Land-based casinos, like those in Las Vegas, Atlantic City, Monaco, on boats and on Indian reservations aren’t so foolish as to pursue the “easy money” option of offering IPOs, getting rich, and then like Party Gaming, losing billions of dollars in revenue simply because people aren’t betting as much online as they used to. Online casinos, like online versions of major newspapers, are not all that permanent or reliable because just like people still prefer the crunchy, crinkly physical version of newspapers, gamblers overwhelmingly at the moment still prefer to gamble amongst other people.
Online casinos have only been around a relatively short time; granted, their lifespan so far is almost as intertwined with the history of the internet up until now, but the future is so unknown and with one “dot com” bust already it could be that in the long term a second “dot com” bust will come about, spelling doom for the online casinos industry or at least a good portion of it. Of course, online casinos could one day replace land-based, brick and mortar casinos entirely – but only if land-based casinos, with their slots offerings, alcoholic beverages, and luxury hotel rooms disappear or become unfashionable. Then again, who knows. |
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