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***ROULETTE ARTICLES*** |
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Online wheel of fortune outshines UK's national lottery
[Wednesday, June 07, 2006]
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Most popular gambling game is the new betting craze online roulette
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Surveys indicate that the British national lottery has declined in popularity since the online roulette craze hit Britain. Punters spend over ₤290 million weekly on virtual online roulette. This is three times what Britons spend on the country's National Lottery - 88 million.
Roulette machines are all over the UK and each machine accepts wagers up to ₤500 by credit card. Estimates place the revenues from these money spinners at a staggering ₤15 billion.
British gamblers are enjoying 16,000 online roulette machines in Britain's top five High Street betting shop chains. The touch-screen terminals attract an enthusiastic and budding following, offering customers top returns with top prizes of 500 on each spin of the online roulette wheel. That's 20 times the payout cap on traditional roulette games.
The total wagered on online roulette is probably even higher - though an exact estimate is impossible to get. No one knows for sure how much money is being fed into the virtual roulette machines in thousands of small privately-operated betting shops across the UK. British bookmakers are uncertain as to the number of installed online roulette terminals, but they know that there are not enough terminals to satisfy all the online demand.
Much of the money fed into the online roulette terminals is won back by punters and recycled through the online roulette games. So the high turnover figure is misleading, because at the end of a session playing online roulette the punters generally lose only a fraction of the amount bet. Exact figures for online roulette turnover and punter losses remain closely guarded secrets.
What is clear is that the online roulette terminals are increasingly lucrative and generate money-spinning profits. Profits from the machines surpassed those made from traditional over- the-counter bets. That stands to reason when one has a surer way of winning.
Government panicky about online roulette machines
The virulent proliferation of roulette machines has generated a degree of panic in the Department of Culture Media and Sport responsible for the wholesale deregulation of Britain's casinos, bingo halls and betting shops. Concerns about would-be gambling associated problems with touch-screen online roulette is influencing British lawmakers to tighten the gambling regulations and frustrating many gambling industry professionals and analysts. To try to minimize a government backlash, betting shops have instituted a voluntary code of conduct, limiting each betting shop to a maximum of four online roulette terminals.
The government wanted to ban the new machines for virtual roulette, insisting that legally, roulette is permitted only within licensed casinos. However, a regulatory loophole worked to the advantage of the online roulette supporters making the outcome of a potential court case uncertain.
Bookmakers, still wary of being shut down, make sure that the virtual spin of the online roulette wheel technically takes place in a central computer located far away from the virtual roulette machine and claim it is a service provided by the machine manufacturer. This point may be insignificant to bettors, but it allows the bookmakers to argue that their online roulette machines are not gaming machines - but "fixed odds betting terminals". "We're just bookmakers taking bets on roulette games that are taking place elsewhere." they say.
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