8/11/2004
Online Casino Gambling has quickly grown from an industry of relative obscurity to an industry estimated to be growing at a very high rate.
Since the online casino industry is inadequately regulated in most parts of the world, an front website page highlighting international non-profit trade association known as the: various awards & Seal of Approval Interactive Gambling Council, was created to ensure the fair and responsible trade guidelines and practices of online casinos.
How Big is Online Casino Gambling?
According to estimates by The River City Group, Inc., a Missouri-based firm, there were now over 1400 online casinos. Christiansen Capital Advisors estimates that online casino gambling expenditures for the year 2001 will eclipse the $3 billion mark. This number is expected to rise to $4.5 billion in 2002 and then $6.3 billion in 2003.
The Interactive Gambling Council (the "IGC") comprises of over 100 online casinos from around the globe that are involved with the interactive gambling industry. Each operating members of the IGC is required to be licensed to lawfully conduct interactive gambling from the jurisdiction within which it operates, and to abide by the IGC's Code of Conduct, a copy of which can be found at the IGC web site. An important role of the Interactive Gambling Council is to advocate for the adoption of strong government regulation of the online casino gambling industry throughout the world.
As the IGC has evolved, the association has recognized the need to provide online casinos with an accreditation that the public will recognize and trust. The Seal of Approval program allows online casinos to display new, higher level of compliance as a supplement to existing government regulatory regimes. The seal is an actual logo that is placed on online casinos to symbolize a willingness of the operator to adhere to a higher level of integrity and responsibility. The Seal of Approval logo is currently served from a third party server in order to protect, to the best of IGC's technical abilities, its authenticity and to allow for instantaneous removal of the seal should the IGC revoke its approval.
The first online casino to participate in the program and display the SOA logo was the Sunny Group of Online Casinos, operator of casinofortune.com, mapau.com and miamibeachcasino.com. The other two online casinos to participate are VIPsports.com, operator of VIPsports.com, VIPsoccer.com, and VIPcasinos.com, and more recently Bet and Chat, operator of betandchat.com.
The IGC believes that the SOA is an important step towards increasing the legitimacy of the online casino gambling industry. The program allows players at online casinos to have some reassurance that online casinos that display the SOA logo have agreed to higher standards, a strong code of Conduct and random monitoring by a third party industry association. The Seal of Approval program also provides an important mechanism for dissatisfied online casino players in the form of a more "formalized" dispute resolution procedure. The SOA establishes a system where a designated Compliance Officer can intervene and mediate at a resolution when there is evidence that any attempted resolution, between a Seal of Approval member site and the consumer, has not been effective.
The SOA is by no means designed to be a replacement for strict government regulation. In fact, it is the IGC's contention that effective government licensing and regulation is the only way to move the online casino gambling industry, as a subset of eCommerce in general, to the next level of legitimacy.
The IGC was created in November 1996 as an affiliate of the Washington DC based Interactive Services Association. It is now headquartered in Vancouver, being incorporated in Canada in March 2000. The council is the leading trade association for the international online casino gambling industry, with its membership operating or supplying services to, most of the reputable gambling sites and online casinos on the World Wide Web.
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