The service from several sites, highlights the fast growth and accessibility of online gambling. The business has grown so much that investment bankers are circling the major players seeking lucrative new stock offerings.
Yet any such offerings will not be in the United States -- the result of Internet gambling's great paradox. The U.S. market by far is the world's largest, but the government remains adamantly opposed to Web wagering.
The stance has kept U.S. companies from venturing into a new market, but it hasn't stopped people from betting online. However, the government hasn't shown the will to bust individual bettors.
So the U.S. gets no economic benefit from online gambling yet is still saddled with the potential social cost -- a growing venue for problem gamblers to feed their addiction.
Online gambling is still dwarfed by traditional forms of wagering. Last year, online gamblers comprised about 3.9 percent of the $237 billion global market, according to Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, a European investment bank.
But Dresdner's London analysts see online betting rising to 6.5 percent of the total market by 2008. Online poker, an estimated $2.9 billion global business this year, is expected to double in size by 2008, Dresdner forecasts.
Poker is especially fast growing.
The average daily number of players in the Internet's most well-traveled poker rooms zoomed from about 2,400 at the beginning of 2003 to around 60,000 in recent months.
