Britain Bets on Internet Casino Games

By legalizing online gaming, it hopes to bring betting companies in from offshore -- and bring tax revenues home

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By Kerry Capell

May 15, 2006 at 4:00 AM UTC

This article is for subscribers only.

It doesn't have any ritzy Vegas-style casinos -- at least not yet. But Britain has gone mad for betting. Newsstands are crammed with glossy gambling magazines and a national daily newspaper devoted entirely to games of chance launched last month. Some cable and satellite channels air nothing but poker and casino games. This year Britain even opened the world's first casino college, where croupier trainees learn the tricks of the trade. Now, the government hopes to make Britain the global hub of online gambling.

Britain has already laid out the welcome mat for online betting firms which allow customers to wager electronically on everything from horses and soccer matches to the winners of reality TV shows and the Oscars. Such Web sites are operated legally by traditional street-corner bookies like Ladbrokes and William Hill, as well as by Web upstarts such as Sportingbet, UKbetting, and Betfair. They pay 15% of their gross profits in tax. So far, that's been a pretty good bet for the government: Tax proceeds have topped $2.5 billion for the Treasury since 2004.