Britain Seeks to Be Global Hub For Online Gambling

Gambling madness struck Britain. Glossy gambling magazines and a month old national daily newspaper entirely devoted to gambling crammed the newsstands. Poker and casino games are mostly aired among some of cable and satellite channels. Britain even opened the world's first casino college this year, where croupier trainees learn the tricks of the trade.

British Government now hopes to make Britain to be the global hub of online gambling and has already laid out the welcome mat for the online betting firms that will allow customers to electronically stake on everything (from horses and soccer matches to reality TV shows winners and even Oscars).

These web sites are legelly operated by traditional street-corner bookies like Ladbrokes and William Hill, also by Web upstarts like Sportingbet, UK betting, and Betfair. 15% of their gross profits goes to the government in tax form. Since 2004, tax proceeds have topped $2.5 billion for the treasury.

To increase the stakes, and to open up the online market, starting next year, to traditional casino games such as poker, blackjack, and roulette, the Parliament has enacted sweeping new legislation.

By becoming the first ever country in the developed world to legalize online gambling, it can lure offshore outfits to locate on British soil and drive even more revenues into public assets. Today most companies that offer online betting are based in offshore tax havens like Gibraltar, the Channel Islands and Costa Rica.

Betting Leader is a great opportunity, for nearly 50 years, bookmaking has been legal in Britain and the British are notorious for being obsessed on betting games. But millions of new customers, who never would have to go to betting shops in British towns, were attracted by the Internet.

According to Christiansen Capital Advisors, a New York-based consultancy which tracks the gambling industry, for only last year Brits risked an astonishing $40 billion in gambling privately in their own homes.

According to Professor Leighton Vaughan Williams, director of the betting research unit at Nottingham Trent University that Britain is already the global leader in betting and now looks likely to become the world capital of Internet gambling as well.