In this article I want to look at how far, and how fast, online casinos have spread. In recent years the number of people visiting these sites has shot up, and so has the money players put through them, day after day.
So what is behind this demonic growth? I see four things.
A beautiful chocolate you can't taste
The first is the masterful design. I'm talking about the graphics in slot games, built to catch the eye and to plant only pleasant thoughts in the back of your mind. That matters a great deal, because the human mind very often stays with images. Here the gambling industry has built something unique from scratch. It has turned the presentation of games into a science. Behind every game there are professionals, graphic artists and designers, working for hours on the final product the user sees.
In effect, they serve you a beautiful chocolate in a gorgeous wrapper. The problem is that you can never actually taste it. The product looks perfectly built, designed to excite you, and the companies do that extremely well. But what's inside is just another form of gambling, no different from any other. And the result is the same here too: losses, and defeat.
Speed: a new event every few seconds
Ease of use goes without saying here too. As I wrote in the article on sports betting, many of the same companies that offer sports betting also run an online casino section, and there are apps that offer only casino games. So I won't dwell on ease. I want to talk about speed.
By speed I mean that instant connection between the player and every single spin. Take sports betting: you have to wait for the match to end to see whether your team won, or at least wait for the next goal. Here, every spin is an event of its own. Even where the law slows spins down to one every two and a half seconds, that's more than 1,400 spins in an hour. It creates moments of intense adrenaline. Everything happens so fast that the player can't think. And to tell the truth, he doesn't want to think. That's exactly why he plays online. He wants everything to happen fast. The more spins, the more play. The more play, the more adrenaline. And it all completes the puzzle called the online casino.
From everything I've seen, the online casino is where the impatient player goes. What do I mean by impatient? The player who can't wait at all. He wants exactly this: speed, for every single stake. As many bets as possible, in as little time as possible. You could say he plays as if there's no tomorrow.
I heard it many times from customers in the venues where I worked: “I'm off home to play a bit more on my phone.” In the venue, there was at least a rhythm. You walked to the counter, you waited for change, you looked up. At home, on the phone, there's no counter and no change. The next spin has already started before you've decided anything. All those stories point to the same conclusion: speed is one more weapon this industry has.
Privacy: the hook you can't see
The online casino offers maximum privacy to anyone who doesn't want to be seen anywhere, and doesn't want anyone to know about his habit. Maybe a few friends know, the only people he shares his gambling stories with. And here lies something very dangerous. The privacy the player values so much is also his hook. It's what keeps him from ever letting go of this form of gambling.
There are no limits here. You can play at work, if the conditions allow: open your phone, open a slots app. Even sitting in a café with one or two friends, you can open the app and let autoplay spin the game for you. All you do is glance down now and then to see whether you've won. That alone is terrible.
And of course there's home, the very heart of everything we're talking about. Because at home, even if you live with your wife, your partner or your parents, you can easily hide in your room and play your game. Even in the toilet. Just imagine.
Think about what that takes away. A venue closes at some hour. In a venue, other people see you: the staff, the regulars, someone you know who happens to walk in. The phone has no closing time, and no witnesses. Nobody sees the third hour. Nobody sees the fifth deposit. And what nobody sees, nobody can stop.
A generation with a third hand
In all my years working in land-based venues, mini casinos, I noticed that most of the people who came in, to the casino, the mini casinos or even the sports betting shops, were over 40. Younger people came too, but they were a minority.
In recent years, in online casinos, it's the other way round: the young are now the clear majority. Leaving aside under-18s, who unfortunately already play online casino games too, from what I've seen most people aged 18 to 30 play almost only online. They rarely set foot in a gambling venue.
We need to stop here for a moment. Young people are so at home with technology that the phone is literally their third hand. So it doesn't surprise me that they gamble online, compared with people in their forties or fifties, who don't live on their phones as much. But it should worry all of us.
An account in a minute, money in seconds
Add to all of the above how easily anyone can open an account at an online casino from their phone, and it's easy to see how big the problem is. And it doesn't stop there. Funding the account takes seconds. Two taps, and the money has left your bank account.
Notice the difference. Money goes in within seconds. Getting money back out is rarely that quick. And while a win sits there waiting, it's only one tap away from being played again. A win on a screen isn't yours until it's back in your hands. Most of the time, it never gets there.
But remember the chocolate. However beautiful the wrapper, however fast the spins, there's nothing inside it for you. The day you really see that, the wrapper starts to lose its shine. And that's where stopping begins.
