The Birth of Online Gambling

The Birth of Online Gambling

Part 1.

By Calida Gaming.com

September 2008

Online Casino’s have been around since 1994, in the early days it would be fair to say it was a bit like the wild west.

Whilst there were certainly many good operators out there, there were almost as many bad ones. Many people in these pioneer days saw it as an opportunity to take peoples money and simply close up shop and run away.

This presented problems for all those in the industry that were trying to drag it towards credibility.

Being one of those original Pioneers we had to find a way to convince the public that we were of substance and were trustworthy, simply stating this in the “about us” section is not really good enough. Our approach was to use our history as our bond, having operated bricks and mortar Betting shops in the UK for many years and myself being a fourth generation Bookmaker.

This approach was also used by all the main high street Betting shop operators and proved a very solid foundation to build credibility.

This was however just the start, it was fine to be able to prove that you were from a trustworthy and credible background but we knew that everything we did from that day on would be how people judged us.

Of the big hurdles to get over, one of the biggest was the matter of software. Now it may seem simple 14 years later but in the early days, even up to 2000 it was not. Could we walk into PC World and ask for the Online Gaming Software section? No obviously we could not. So the next choice is to buy a custom built package or build one yourself.

The existing custom built packages at the time were very basic and as the industry was still so new, they were biased very much towards the designers opinion of what the online gaming public would want. This ranged from software designed by professional punters that was so complicated it was unusable to the general public, to software that had been designed solely by computer developers that required a Degree in computer science to place a single bet.

So many of us took the path of building our own, sounds simple right? Wrong.

In a planning session with gaming staff and IT developers it does sound easy and we all fell into the trap of believing what was said when developers promised the world. The simple truth however is that with the best intentions the technology simply was not ready for the revolution we were attempting to make. It seems so obvious now in hindsight but that’s the way it always is.

So, we have a credible name, good solid plans of what we want and software that almost does it all. This in itself was quite an achievement in those days, add to this the fact that we were also taking the company public with an IPO on the London AIM market and that we made it through with our sanity mostly in tact is a miracle.

The IPO was scrapped as the Dot Com bubble burst right above our heads. Although we were frustrated by all the work that had gone into the IPO, the endless projections, the road shows with institutional investors, what it did for us was force us to have a very clear well planned out strategy.

Once the development is done and the software live (this was the first time I had heard the term “software version release 1”) we thought the hard work was over and it would be plain sailing from now on. Software is a funny creature that has a life all of its own, happily working 100% and then simply deciding it does not like Tuesdays so wont play today. Sitting here writing this and indeed chatting with other people from this time period it seems such an innocent problem, we are reputable people, our intentions are good and pure, we made our own software so we could give our customer the things we think he would want but its not quite working today…..

This was in fact a MONUMENTAL problem. You see Mr Joe Public who has somehow managed to find our site, in itself an achievement in the days of slow dial up Internet accounts and walled gardens such as AOL may have managed to sign up for an account, may have managed to get as far as making a deposit and now his tip of the week is about to run at Ascot and guess what?? He cannot log in.

Had this been in a UK Betting shop, we would at the very least be able to have a face to face conversation, our staff in the shops would always have a very good working relationship with all our customers. They would get an explanation about whatever technical fault had caused their problem and because they knew our staff and us, had a physical connection with us that would be that.

Online operations are somewhat different, how many people have been frustrated that they have an issue and all they can find is an email submission form??

How did we solve this??

This article is part of a series written to show today’s players where the industry came from and what day to day issues today’s online Casino, Bingo and Poker operators face.

For further parts of this story by the Author please visit  Calida Gaming