In 1996 we saw a surge of internet casinos that swept thru the world. The U. S. saw a tremendous increase in both internet casinos and players. This huge increase of online players worried the land-based casino owners so they lobbied to get it stopped or at best slowed down. They recognized if this pace continued they could see a lot more of a loss of profits. So they lobbied Congress hard and in 2006 The United States passed the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (or UIGEA).

The UIGEA act prohibited all the banks and payment processors from processing any kind of transactions in connection with online gambling. This created a problem for gamblers in loading and withdrawing funds from their online accounts. While the companies continued to operate they had to use payment processors that could get around such restrictions. Despite all of these laws related to online gambling, some internet casinos continued to accept gamblers from the USA.

On the other hand, most of the bigger online brands left the USA market, the options for players became incredibly limited. Many said it was hard to find a good online casino. A lot of ratings sites started to appear that directed players to the sites they so desperately looked for. Some of those sites were better than others, but they served the need that was created. Shortly after the industry started to stabilize and gamblers were playing online again, Black Friday hit the online gambling world.

Many casinos had found a way around the deposit and withdrawal problems and the online gambling world was growing once again. Many started to feel invincible to this new law. The government was not really enforcing it and it looked like they had no intentions starting. This was certainly a false feeling of security for both the gamblers and internet casinos. April 15, 2011, will go down in history as the day the online gambling community was punished and punished hard. It was the start of a new era. The US Department of Justice charged the principals of the three largest poker rooms Poker Stars, Full Tilt Poker and Absolute Poker with bank fraud, illegal gambling offenses, and laundering billions of dollars in illegal gambling proceeds. The DOJ seized their internet domain names as well as their funds. Unexpectedly many US gamblers were not just left with nowhere to play and no way to recover their funds.

Black Friday forced more gambling brands to leave the USA Market. Everybody was again scrambling to find new places to play, worried if they would ever get their money back, and wondering if anybody would stay in the US market. A major blow was struck to online gambling and several wondered if it would survive. Again the rating sites played an important role in discovering places for players to play. Now the market was very limited and it was a struggle to find online sites. Once again the market slowly started to stabilize and things settled down a bit. The market was damaged but survived.

The next major event was Gray Monday. Grey Monday saw more domains and gambling operations seized. There are two main differences with these seizures. This time both small and big sites were seized. Many different sectors in the industry were seized including online poker, casinos, sports books and even bingo. Basically nobody was safe now. Now the size of the organization did not matter anymore. Nor did the industry you were in. This round of seizures was experienced by everyone throughout the gambling industry. The full effects of this seizure haven’t been felt yet but there is now even less online US casinos available. Will the industry survive? It remains to be seen but it’s been hit hard.