Friday, October 22, 2004

When Research and Online Gambling Collide

Online gambling attracts surfers

Everywhere I look nowadays, there's top ten lists - and it seems gambling is no stranger to this list phenomenon especially when hidden in the guise of 'research'.

It seems hitherto respected research agency, Nielson/NetRating have published a survey that claims that over 4 million Brits are REGULAR internet gamblers.

[In the world of gambling, a regular gambler is traditionally viewed as someone who has placed a bet in the last 6 (or sometimes 12) months. However, since I haven't found a definition from Nielson/NetRatings, i'll move on]

Nielson/NetRatings also suggests that the more money is spent on advertising, the more popular the site is - suggesting ads work. I'd be interested to see how that correlates to actual profit made.

The research then goes on to publish the top ten gambling sites in the UK. And this is where it gets interesting.

This is the list:
The National Lottery
Casino Tropez
ChooseaPrize
Ladbrokes
Casino-and-games.com
Casino.co.uk
The Daily Draw
Vernons
Loopy Lotto
William Hill

Now, I'll grant them The National Lottery and I'll give them Ladbrokes and William Hill as a bonus.

Lets now look at the remaining 7 sites closely. Anything missing here? hmmm. Far be it for me to question this research, but the exclusion of sites such as Betfair, 888.com (Casino-on-Net), Coral, ANY Poker room and a whole slew of sites that i've actually heard of, makes this list hard to swallow. In addition, the addition of sites such as Casino Tropez (who?), affiliate directory Casino-and-games (who?) and FREE sites Choose a Prize, The Daily Draw and Loopy Lotto -that are not, in any way, gambling sites, appears to make this research dubious at the very least. As for dearest Vernons - well done old boys - a football pools site is bigger than all the UK betting exchanges, most of the UK bookies, most known online casinos and every poker site.

Over to you Neilson/NetRatings.

posted by jo @ 1:01 AM   0 comments

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