Since the inception on online gambling and the apparent growth that is being experienced, one question that has loomed over the minds of stakeholders is whether online casinos will ultimately replace brick and mortar casinos otherwise known as land-based casinos. This is a very legitimate question, mainly because gambling is an important industry and a backbone of the economy of major cities like Las Vegas and Atlantic City in the United States. Such cities have been built the casino business entirely, and if internet-based casinos are going to take over and replace the land-based model, there are very dire implications.
A lot of players are gravitating towards online gambling. This being so, it is essential to look at the issues that the online casinos have brought that would render the brick-and-mortar obsolete.
Convenience
Online casinos are much more convenient than land-based casinos in many ways. You don’t have to travel to a given location to play your favourite games. All you need is a smartphone, a tablet or a computer and a proper internet connection and voila! You are in the games. This means that you can play from anywhere in the world.
Game Variety
There is a much more comprehensive game range in an online casino than there can be in a land-based casino. By the mere fact that online casinos are housed in buildings, it means that they have limited space; not all games can be hosted in a given structure. Online casinos can host an unlimited number of games and therefore, can offer a more significant variety in one site. Most players would abandon land-based casinos for this very reason.
With the many varieties come exciting bonuses and promotions, including sign-up bonuses and loyalty programs. This means that customers have much more to benefit from an online casino that they have in a land-based casino.
Digital Currency
Bitcoin currencies have brought a shift in the whole online casino industry. With faster payouts, account anonymity and such other benefits, online gambling has dramatically improved. Cryptocurrency is becoming more widely accepted as a currency. You can use it to shop and pay bills. This makes online gambling even more attractive since you can readily use your winnings for whatever cause you to want.
Every player would want to get their funds in the shortest time possible. The bureaucracy that is prevalent in the brick and mortar casinos is something that exists to their undoing. With faster processing times, digital currency casinos are much more attractive than regular currency casinos.
Anonymity
We all know that society isn’t so welcoming to gambling. Gambling is widely seen as a vice. Some employers will even deny you a job if you are a gambler in the view that you may be irresponsible. Land-based casinos require that you pay using your credit cards and that you also disclose some information about yourself. Such information is what potential employers, hackers, and fraudsters use against players. Cryptocurrency offers players the opportunity to go completely anonymous. You don’t have to disclose any information to have a casino account or to make transactions.
In any primary industry, change is inevitable. With the insertion of new sets of variables into the status quo comes disruptions that yield entirely different results. The current environment in the gambling fraternity is more or less what is happening in the transport industry, where the internet of things has brought a shift in the cab experience with car share platforms like Uber and Lyft. Whenever there is a disruption in the market, change may render an existing business model obsolete and irrelevant. Disruptions ensure that new entrants can offer services faster, cheaper and better. This means that the stakeholders that existed before the interruption have either to adapt to the new ways of doing business or be wiped out entirely.
Though it may be impossible to wipe out land-based casinos entirely, time will have it that very few of them will remain operational and relevant. Of course, you have to factor in the die-hard fanatics and conservative players that will prefer land-based casinos over the online platforms anytime.
Stakeholders in the land-based casinos have so much to lose if there will be a mass exodus from their business into the online platforms. Of course, they will not stand aside and look at cities like Las Vegas remain ghost towns. They will use every trick in the book to ensure that their online peers do not cannibalize them.
In conclusion
Whether online casinos will annihilate land-based casinos is neither here nor there; the whole idea is dependent on so many factors that are still at a developmental level, but as it is with such matters, speculation is rife.
