The 11 largest online gambling sites in the world have allowed people to play their favorite games from the comfort of their own homes. Online gambling also provides an easy and less intimidating way for newcomers to become familiar with the rules and norms of certain games through interactive tutorials and free play.
Online gambling is growing fast due to the increased penetration of smartphones, as mobile offers greater convenience for users, being a great time waster during short breaks or commutes. Mobile now accounts for a large percentage of the total turnover for most online operators. According to Research and Markets, the online gambling market was a $35.97 billion one in 2014 and is estimated to reach $66.59 billion by 2020, growing at a CAGR of 10.8%. Sports betting is also growing in popularity, which along with casino sites, make the most money. The number of countries that have legalized online gambling has also increased to 80, with Europe being the largest online gambling market in the world. Many U.S states have also legalized online gambling.
Gambling or playing games of chance hold appeal to many people, some of whom hope that lightning will strike them and provide them with a hefty windfall. For others, it’s the allure of trying to beat the games, figuring out some method whereby they can gain a statistical advantage over the house. Figuring out how to beat the house has even attracted the attention of scientists, some of whom used chaos theory to shift the odds in their favor while playing roulette, in a study that was published in the journal Chaos. However, the method can easily be disrupted by casinos making minor adjustments to their games, and big losses are always a possibility even when the odds are in your favor.
Stokkete/Shutterstock.com
Online gambling is largely regarded as safe, as players are not dealing with cash around other players, and there is little incentive for the largest online gambling sites to try anything shady and disrupt their cash cows; they’re going to make plenty of money without trying to cheat players out of more. Many gambling websites have also implemented responsible gambling features, which prevent users from financial distress through setting a loss limit on their account, ensuring that they can only use their discretionary funds and don’t go crazy trying to recoup any losses. These websites also have protection checks to ensure that the user’s data and transactions are kept safe and secure. For further reading, check out our list of the 11 countries with the highest gambling losses in the world.
It’s somewhat surprising that despite the massive growth in online and mobile casino gaming, traditional brick-and-mortar casino operators like Las Vegas Sands Corp. (NYSE:LVS), MGM Resorts International (NYSE:MGM), Melco Crown Entertainment Ltd (ADR) (NASDAQ:MPEL), Caesars Entertainment Corp (NASDAQ:CZR), and Wynn Resorts, Limited (NASDAQ:WYNN) have made little effort to cash in on their casino pedigrees and launch full-blown online casinos. Wynn Resorts does have an app which allows for mobile sports betting and horse race betting anywhere in Nevada, but other casino games are absent and players outside of Nevada are out of luck. And while Las Vegas Sands made efforts to build an online casino presence in the U.K, it has since become an opponent of online gambling, with the company’s billionaire Chairman and CEO Sheldon Aldeson, a major Trump donor, vowing to spend whatever it takes to ban online gambling in the U.S.
Given the already murky legality of online gambling in the U.S, that possibly explains why established brick-and-mortar casinos have been relatively hesitant to dip their toes too far into the online gambling waters. Some states, including Nevada, have legalized it, but it’s explicitly illegal in many other states. Regardless, major casino names are nowhere to be found on our list, and may be so far behind the eight ball at this point that a major acquisition of one of the companies on the list could be their only way to make up the ground, if indeed they do decide to make a bigger push online.
In the list, beginning on the next page, we have listed the 11 largest online gambling sites in the world. We have collated gambling website data from gamblingsites.net and grizzlygambling.com, and have ranked them based on their global Alexa ranks. The rank is calculated by taking into account the average daily visitors to a website and its pageviews over the past 3 months.
