UK Gambling Summit Held

[Boat Drinks]

Representatives from more than 30 countries visited the United Kingdom today to talk about regulating online gaming. The United States was not one of them.

The U.K. is holding the online gambling summit to create international standards for the regulation of the online gambling industry.

Sometime in the second part of 2007, online gambling will be legal in the U.K. The country’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport, is reaching out to both online gaming companies and other countries to ensure that any online gambling that goes on in the U.K. is regulated to be fair and safe.

The U.K. is by far the largest and most powerful country that plans to tax and regulate the online gambling industry. On the other side of this ideological ocean is the U.S. Although some form of gambling is legal is just about all of its states, a majority of U.S. lawmakers refuse to look at online gambling except as an illegal activity.

Some of the more interesting stats of the study are:

· There are nearly one million regular online gamblers in Britain alone who make up nearly one-third of Europe’s 3.3 million regular online gamblers.

· Europe’s regular gamblers stake approximately £3.5 billion a year – an average of £1000 each.

· There are now 2,300 sites across the world. A large number of these are based in a few key nations, with Antigua (537) at the top of the pile and Costa Rica in second with 474;

· The U.K. currently has 70 online betting sites, but no gaming (poker, blackjack, roulette etc) sites.

· Women are becoming increasingly important in the remote gambling market. During the World Cup about 30-percent of those visiting key U.K.-based betting websites were women.