Online casinos have been around since the late 1990s but they have enjoyed their biggest growth in the last 10 years. Many sceptics believed it would impossible for online versions of top games such as roulette, blackjack and poker to become as popular as real casinos popularised in movies such as Casino Royale, but the opposite has been true with online gambling sites gaining hundreds of millions of visitors every year.
To attract new customers and then keep them interested, casino companies have had to bring in many new features and technological updates. Here, we look at a few attributes that have proved appealing to fans of online wagering.
Live dealers
One of the main reasons many were sceptical about how successful online casinos could become was the lack of live dealers. Interacting with the dealer or croupier was always an integral part of a traditional casino set-up. When casinos first switched to online platforms that element was lost. However, thanks to new technology, casino websites are now able to offer live dealer games with real people dealing the cards or spinning the roulette wheel while interacting with the players.
All the top websites are now adding more live dealer games to their line-ups. In fact, they could become the standard format in the near future.
Better bonus options
Many online casinos and sports betting websites offer sign-up bonuses in the form of free bets or free spins. However, many require the bettor to wager the value of their winnings a certain number of times before their winnings can be withdrawn. Recently, some casinos such as Ojo have been bucking the trend by offering deposit bonuses and free spin offers with zero wagering requirements. And they even pay you a little money back for every bet you place. This is a ground-breaking moment for online casinos and many might be tempted to follow suit as the demands of the customer changes.
Cryptocurrency payments
Some betting companies have jumped on the cryptocurrency bandwagon by accepting payments from certain digital currencies such as Bitcoin. While it may seem like a novelty idea, it actually makes sense in an area where fast and secure payments are very important to customers. In the future, gambling websites could use the blockchain platform to offer further levels of trust and protection to players.
Virtual reality
Virtual reality casinos are in their infancy, but they have already started to appear and look set to play a big part in the future of online gaming. More than 20 years after VR technology first appeared on a commercial level following a string of failures, the technology is finally able to offer a satisfying customer experience. If VR casinos take off, we could arrive at a situation where we have gone almost full circle from physical to online casinos and then back to “physical” casinos (albeit digitally constructed ones). Players will be able to enter a casino, join a table and interact with the dealer and other players while being visually represented by an avatar of their choice.
Source: Pixabay
Online gaming is changing at a rapid rate thanks to new technology but the desire for an authentic casino experience and a fair deal from the house are two factors that have remained constant throughout.
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