The technological advancement and the speed at which you can surf the Internet, are key pillars in the growth of the popularity of online casinos worldwide. Nowadays, online casinos have consolidated as one of the most popular and important forms of entertainment in the virtual world.
Gambling has been a part of our society since time immemorial. In fact, gambling is something that all cultures have in common, and over time it has been accepted and recognized as a form of entertainment. Gambling went from being forbidden by law in the Roman Empire, to become a massive phenomenon embraced by a great majority of countries in the world.
Nowadays, gamblers can access hundreds of online casinos to play and bet on their favorite gambling games. The only requirements are to be of legal age and have an electronic device with internet access and voila, you are all set to play at one of the best online casinos for real money.
However, unlike what most people think, the birth of online casinos is quite recent, since it originated at the end of the 20th century.
A bit of history
The first casino in the history of our society was inaugurated in 1638, in Venice, Italy. Curiously, this establishment is still in operation today. Due to its great success, several buildings were built throughout the European continent as a place of entertainment to play games of chance. Later, the American continent would join. At that time, such spaces were built only for aristocrats who gambled huge sums of money, which is why they could become as majestic as a palace.
However, the popularity of this type of establishment grew more and more, until it ceased to be an exclusively elitist place of entertainment and became a more popular one. This is how today, anyone can enjoy several hours of gambling in one of the thousands of casinos that exist in each country or city; making gambling and betting become one of the most popular pastimes in our society.
From the physical to the virtual casino
As everything in this life, the gaming industry evolved along with the advances of our society. Technology was inserted in the gaming world, generating advances that became more and more significant until the moment when the Internet became a tool of massive use. That is when a drastic change was generated.
In 1994, the first online casino in history was born in Antigua and Barbuda, a state in the Lesser Antilles of the Caribbean Sea. This country became the first jurisdiction in the world to introduce a regulatory framework for online gambling, after signing the Free Trade Agreement and the Processing Zone Act. From that moment on, other online casino operators began to appear, requesting their official licenses from this country, in order to be able to offer their gaming and betting services in this type of platforms.
This is how online casinos originated. At the beginning, this type of casino did not achieve massive popularity, since people were not familiar with the Internet as they are today. At that time, people did not know how to manage virtually and even less if it was about betting money. Therefore, the rise of online casinos did not come until the beginning of the 21st century along with the democratization of the Internet.
Nowadays most of the world’s population is connected to the net and they also manage their finances through it. Almost everything is handled through the digital world, therefore the internet is known to all and practically a necessity. This is how online casinos have gained ground over physical casinos, since they allow players to access games in a matter of seconds without having to leave their homes. Of course, there are still nostalgic gamblers who long for the old days and prefer to go to a physical casino to play face to face with their opponents and the croupier, but they are a minority.
The great boom that the online gambling industry is experiencing nowadays allows players to gamble at the best online casinos for real money, since it gives them the possibility to try all the casinos they want, anywhere in the world, without having to travel or waste time. This way they can choose the one that offers them the most benefits, or the one they like the most, or the one that offers the most games. It could be said that online casinos offer a great amount of benefits that physical casinos do not have.