There was a time when online casinos were seen as the wild west of the gambling industry. A place where players didn’t know who to trust or where to play. So what happened? Read on as we take a closer look at the rise of online casino gambling, examine the current state of affairs, and speculate about what the future may hold.

The first online casinos were born in 1994 in a perfect storm of three vital elements. First, Microgaming (Isle of Mann) was producing fully functional gambling software. Second, the eSecurity company called Cryptologic was able to ensure the safety of this casino software. Third, ecommerce had begun to take off, and digital payments were finally safe and easy. With all of these factors in order, online casinos licensed in Antigua and Barbuda and the Kahnawake territory began to flood the net between ’94 and ‘96.

These sites and their software were simple at best, but they were at least trying to be fair. The countless unregulated sites, though, began to take advantage of vulnerable players and some simply didn’t have the cash flow to pay out winnings. These operations set the industry back a decade in the minds of players and we’re only now (finally!) putting those days in the past. This, along with people’s perception of off-line gambling, created somewhat of a stigma and meant that such pastimes (particularly online) were seen in a very negative light — a stigma which had the knock-on effect of reducing online gaming revenue in the early days.