In recent years, the online casino industry has shifted its status from “known by a select community” to recognised worldwide as a legitimate online entertainment option. Countries like the U.S, United Kingdom, and Australia have been at the forefront of this movement over the last couple of decades, establishing legal frameworks for the growing number of online casino operators to thrive in. As a result, many more markets have joined this movement, and have created legislation to legalise and regulate online casino activity within their borders.
However, despite the success of the online casino industry, which now boasts a global market size of $117.5 billion, there have been challenges faced by the industry related to problems created by partaking in the activity of online gambling. Terms such as “gambling addiction” and “financial risk” have emerged with greater regularity in conjunction with the increased exposure of online casino games such as blackjack, roulette, poker, and slots.
To tackle these issues, companies such as GAMSTOP and GamCare in the UK are working with vulnerable individuals to protect them from potential harm from online gambling. Anti-addiction companies like those mentioned above work with UK-licensed online casinos to monitor player activity, in particularly with regards to amounts wagered and deposited.
Restrictions were also introduced by the UK government in 2024 to raise awareness of gambling addiction and limit the amount players were spending and losing. But while GAMSTOP and GamCare continue to do good work and help players at risk, there is a slow migration of players towards casinos not on GAMSTOP that bypass any of the checks and restrictions placed on UK-based game play.
What are the benefits?
Besides from unrestricted game play and an absence of third parties potentially snooping around your private financial records, there are many more advantages of playing on non-GAMSTOP online casinos. The main benefit from an operator’s perspective is that they have more freedom to introduce features that would usually be prohibited on a platform listed with GAMSTOP.
Firstly, the added freedom allows online casino operators to offer a wider range of bonuses and promotions to reward players for their game play. This could come in the form of sign-up bonuses, free spins, deposit match bonuses or even birthday bonuses. The flexibility in how operators not on GAMSTOP can reward their players is an attractive aspect for users that want to get more out of their game play.
In addition to the greater variety of bonuses on offer, there are benefits felt from playing on non-GAMSTOP platforms in other essential aspects and processes on an online casino platform. With less rules to adhere to, the flexibility extends to payment processes, with faster processing times usually found on casinos not on GAMSTOP. Not only can players benefit from faster transactions, but lesser recognised payment methods such as cryptocurrency might be more readily available on these platforms.
Reward with Risk
While there are benefits from playing on non-GAMSTOP online casinos as a UK player for example, there is less overall protection from playing outside of the UK jurisdiction. Organisations like GAMSTOP work closely with UK-licensed online casinos. Therefore, as soon as a player ventures away from platforms covered by the UK license, they are slightly exposing themselves to external threats, as well as losing any monitoring provided by anti-addiction companies. There is an element of risk versus reward when playing online casino games, but would players take risk for a reward?
