Looking Back on Online Gambling in 2012

December 27, 2012

Some pretty interesting things happened in the online gambling market during 2012. We saw some online casino operators completely revamping the way they work, we saw the USA online gambling market open up, we saw lots of shakeups, acquisitions and mergers happen. Indeed, it was quite an interesting year, so we take a look back at some of the major events.

Top of the list of online gambling related happenings just has to be the move towards legalisation of online casinos in Nevada. We saw the Nevada Gaming Control Board grant the first ever USA online gambling licenses to a range of online casino sites, and companies that provide online gambling related services.

From an online slots point of view, a couple of very interesting things happened. First off, Microgaming lost its license to the blockbuster Lord of the Rings video slot game. So it quickly negotiated a new deal, and replace Lord of the Rings with a new movie franchise based online slot, The Dark Knight. On top of this, Microgaming recently launched a new Battlestar Galactica themed video slot, another blockbuster. We have also seen the massive Facebook game developer Zynga, start to move into pay to play online slots, and this will be a major thing to happening 2013 when they complete this move.

In Canada, we saw the Northern Bear online casino completely sidestep online gambling legislation, and launch itself without even paying lip service to the Canadian Government. Despite complaints, this new online casino remains open, after exploiting certain laws regarding aboriginal peoples in Canada. We think that this has now set a precedent and look forward to seeing what happens in Canada in 2012.

Again in Canada, the Amaya Gaming Group has come out of nowhere, and been on the fast track view mergers and acquisitions, to position itself as a major new presence in the line-up of online slot and online gambling software developers. We expect Amaya to go from strength to strength in the next year. Also in the last year, we have seen a massive increase in the number of online casino sites that are offering some form of mobile casino application to its players. Every major casino, and every major platform developer has, and continues to, develop along mobile casino lines. This was possibly the largest single thing that changed in the online gambling market during 2012.

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