Online gambling has a very interesting history when you look at it from its inception to where it is at today. It covers a span of almost two decades and has made leaps and bounds from when it was first created. Online gambling first started in the mid nineties when the nations of Antigua and Barbuda passed the Free Trade and Processing act of 1994. This allows companies to get licenses for online casinos. While the internet was still fairly new at this time, it made sense to try and create profits from the easy accessibility that could be offered by online casinos. The first internet gambling software provider, Microgaming, came out this very same year and has stayed apart of the online gambling business up to this day.

After this software provider was founded, it came time to actually start up and operate online casinos, online poker, and online sports betting institutions. The first recognized online casino was one that was created by Microgaming and was called the Gaming Club. It was created in the fall of 1995 and still offers services to this day. Other online casinos that were a part of this early age of online gambling include the InterCasino in 1996 and the Kahanawake Gaming Commission in Canada. The Kahanawake Gaming Commission was a little different in that it issued the licenses for these online casinos.

The first online sports book was created in 1996 and was called Intertops. Previous to that time they had been a company that based all of their sports betting over the phone but they naturally made a jump to the World Wide Web in order to increase business. Just like the Gaming Club, this company is still around and is still one of the premier sports betting sites today.

The next step for online gaming was to bring out the virtual poker rooms. In 1998 Planet Poker began to start offering online poker games. They were soon followed by Paradise Poker in 1999 and Poker Stars in 2001. These newer poker sites had improved software platforms which provided a better quality game of poker over the internet, and many of them are also still around today

With all of these sites gaining credibility and recognition throughout the world, the laws regulating them became stricter. In 2006 the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act was passed and publicly listed sites closed their doors to people living in the United States. The UIGEA has since changed that and only outlawed gambling in a few states.

In recent years, however, there have been strides to help online gambling take off. The European Union has since ruled in favor of it and there are many publicly listed companies. South Africa and Italy joined in the cause and in 2008 they both introduced regulations to endorse online gambling. There are still a lot of kinks to work out, including getting large companies like Visa and MasterCard on board, but overall there are some big strides that are being taken to get online gambling available to more people.