Online casinos offer better value to gamblers than local casinos. They don’t have the overhead of a Las Vegas or Atlantic City casino and can also therefore offer better odds and bigger bonuses. Traditional land based casinos attract visitors with glitzy hotels and fancy restaurants. In 1976 gambling was legalized in Atlantic City. Las Vegas casinos realized that they can have to do more to attract East Coast visitors than just offer casino gambling. This was the beginning of the Las Vegas Mega-Resort. The Mega-Resort caters to the whole family as a way to be a vacation destination. It now costs an approximately $5 billion to buy the land and build a resort on the Las Vegas strip.

In 1986, Foxwoods opened as a bingo hall on Indian land. Foxwoods added casino table games in 1992 and playing slot online machines in 1993. Atlantic City was now in the same position as Las Vegas. They needed to offer more than just gambling. Atlantic City handled the problem the same way that Las Vegas did; they threw money at it. Foxwoods location attracted millions of visitors and they continued to grow throughout the 1990’s and also the early 2000’s until a downturn in the economy forced states to loosen laws regarding casino gambling. Today Foxwoods will be the largest casino on earth and their business will be stolen by smaller casinos. They have opened the MGM at Foxwoods so that you can bring in top line entertainment. This again costs money.

The next step inside this cycle is online gambling. Online casinos are more convenient than any local casino, so no-one is going to open up closer to the gambler. When an online casino is losing business they also throw money at the problem. Online casinos do this by offering bonuses to the player, not with white tigers in the lobby.

Online casinos are run out of small offices with a limited range of employees. These offices are in small countries with legalized gambling and limited taxes. The casinos pay licensing fees for the software that they normally use. You wouldn’t be able to tell an online casino from a telemarketing office just by looking at it.
The low overhead allows internet casinos to offer « Better than Vegas » odds and bonuses on deposits. How often does a land based casino match your first deposit? The competition for new cyber gamblers is fierce and the bonuses continue to increase. The problem is the fact that online gambling just isn’t exactly legal within the usa. Why not? Since it is just not taxed! This is where the problems start.

The US Government has no interest in the individual gambler. They may be trying to choke the money supply. The theory is the fact that once there’s no money to be made by offshore casinos they are going to go away. Then either gamblers will go back to traditionally taxed land based casinos or even the taxing laws will change and the casinos that will be paying tax will be allowed to open online casinos. Las Vegas has a new law that enables e-gambling in hotel rooms while several states are attempting to tax internet sales. Will this create the new « Atlantic City » for current online casinos? Will they figure out a whole new way of throwing money at the problem? The answer is yes and also the cycle continues.