It is no secret that the popularity of online casinos has grown tremendously in the past few years. And it did not affect individual regions. This is a worldwide trend, because in Canada, the United States, Asia and Europe the demand for online gambling services demonstrates the dynamics of demand growth. What is the reason for this excitement? How temporary is this phenomenon and how long will this growth in demand last? There are many reasons and we have chosen the most important ones. Today let’s analyze why online casino packs are so popular and at what point it happened.

The impact of the covid-19 pandemic on casinos

Casinos, both online and land-based, have always been there, from small gaming clubs to huge global halls. Gradually, they started going online to be accessible to all comers, because there are countries where land-based casinos were simply absent or illegal.

And the pandemic made adjustments to the industry. In late 2019, early 2020, the world was swept by a wave of the virus, which is still there and moved into the category of “seasonal diseases”, but its impact on gambling remained unchanged. As everywhere were announced restrictive measures for visitors, land-based casinos were forced to stop operations, to limit the number of allowed players in the halls. Naturally, all this did not go in favor of the companies. Some went bankrupt, but the most courageous – switched to the online format.

It was the online format that saved the industry during the pandemic, giving it a new stage of development.

Users simply had no other option to immerse themselves in the casino atmosphere than online formats and venues. Brands and casino owners picked up on the trend and began to quickly reformat their business into a digital format. They succeeded, and quite successfully. Covid closed people at home for almost 2 years and all this time the industry grew, new users came thanks to advice from acquaintances, advertising integrations and from banal boredom, looking for something new.

The casinos were not standing still either, as they understood that at the beginning of 2020 their systems were not perfect and it was necessary to actively develop them and introduce something new, from bonuses to exclusive games.

Development of mobile gaming

This is the second factor that served as a starting point in the formation of the online casino sector and its frenzied popularity. Generally speaking, it is impossible to say that one or the other factor holds any place. It is a set of situations that coincided at a certain point in time and brought the sphere of gambling to what it is now.

Coming back to mobile gambling, it should be noted that the mobile gaming market occupies more than 50% of the gaming market. According to statistics, more than 60% of users use exactly smartphones for gaming, not PCs, not tablets, but exactly smartphones as the main device.

In 2012-2014, users played mostly on their PCs and laptops, then with the development of technology and the increasing power of mobile devices, phones began to displace PCs for a number of factors:

• Portability and convenience;
• Powerful iron in the phone, which allows you to play even online shooters and “royal battles”;
• A large variety of games;
• Additional features in the form of authorization via biometrics (fingerprints, Face-id);
• Cheapness of mobile devices and wide range of models. For 300-400 USD, a user can afford a medium-powered device that will allow you to play most of the current projects, even if not on Ultra graphics settings.

Online casinos clearly understood the market trend and began to actively port their products to mobile devices. Whereas until then only a portion of games were available to gamblers, with the onset of the pandemic, casinos weren’t just developing mobile versions of sites, but full-fledged applications that could give players a new experience and experience.

Since smartphones had enough power, the applications were not inferior to the full-fledged PC versions of the sites, if not more interesting.

The technical base alone was not enough, a motivational base was needed. Did it exist? Of course there was. The casinos understood that users had to be motivated to use mobile devices, so they developed a separate system of bonuses for both new sites and $5 deposit casinos that were in the industry for a long time.

• Casino sign-up bonuses through a mobile app come in a variety of variations:
• Free freespins for registering through a mobile app;
• Deposit bonuses for registration via mobile app;
• No deposit bonuses in the form of freespins for registration through mobile apps;
• First login bonuses via mobile app;

Bonuses and nice gifts for users sharing their achievements on social media using the mobile app.

Earnings Opportunity

Back to the pandemic and the financial situation of many people who were left at home, with no opportunity to make money. Yes, many have decided to try their hand at online casinos and make money. There are two aspects to consider here: payment methods and payouts, and winnings.

Let’s start with casino winnings. Due to the variety of sites and conditions, new customers could play for not big bets and not big amounts. There appeared a large number of sites with the option of making a minimum deposit, such as $10 deposit casino, multiplying it (with welcome bonuses) by 2, or even 3 times.

Casinos have become more accessible through their offers and programs for newcomers. This attracts customers, but what about those who have never played? For them, there is a demo mode of machines, where they can try slots, roulette, dice and other entertainment options without investing.

Demo mode allows you to understand the mechanics, develop a strategy or test the workability of strategies from the Internet. It turns out a kind of practical simulator for beginners.

And now let’s move on to the aspect of payments and replenishments. The casinos have worked out a detailed financial system in their sector. If previously, to make a deposit, you had to have either a bank card or some unique payment method, today, the gambler can use anything he wants. The standard list of deposit payment options includes the following means:

• Bank cards from Visa;
• Bank cards from MasterCard;
• Cards can be either debit or credit cards;
• Digital wallets Skrill, Neteller, Easypay and others.

Separately, we can also mention the cryptocurrency casino sector, where players can easily fund their accounts using cryptocurrency transfers. Moreover, online casinos offered customers not just transfers in BTC, USDT, ETH, but in dozens of different coins.

Recall that the heyday of online gambling also came with the rise of cryptocurrency. Crypto gambling became very profitable for both sides. And yes, the casino’s withdrawal rule: withdraw funds the same way you deposited them. Therefore, the gambler, having deposited 1 bitcoin worth $24k, could withdraw his winnings in the future already in the form of the same bitcoin, only at a favorable rate of $45k.

New formats of games

Since we talked about the fact that the sphere is developing and the developers have to make bold steps, you can not ignore the development of the technical base in terms of games. If the usual slots (no matter how classic they are) get bored with the gamblers, what else can they give them? So began the development of interesting projects such as Live Casino with real dealers.

Yes, that’s right, the real dealers, not actors or graphics, but the real professionals from the world of casinos, who were forced to go on “vacation” because of the pandemic.

The essence of this format is that the user entered a room that conveys the atmosphere of a real casino. In front of him stood the dealer and held the distribution of cards, roulette wheel, throwing dice. Everything as in real life.

These projects do not just give gamblers the opportunity to feel again in the conditions of a land-based casino, but also gave a new experience with each other.

Automatons like aviator or crash games were the next revelation of the industry. Maximally simple automata that bring the user huge winnings. They were the hit of 2022 and attracted a huge number of new audiences to the sites.