Common Issues Involving Mobile Gambling

Mobile gambling is becoming more popular nowadays. Evolving from Internet gambling, mobile gambling became an alternative way due to the rise of mobile phones. The first opportunity took place during the 2002 World Cup for the game football when people went betting through their mobile phones. It went progressing thereafter, benefiting football as mobile phones offered the opportunity to bet on football matches.

Made possible for the first time through i-mode by Dai-Ichi Kangyo bank the first mobile game was the lottery particularly the Japanese New Year lottery. Also, besides football another popular sports betting game made possible through mobile phones was horse racing. Even the reality show Big Brothers used the mobile technology by betting on who will be next person to be evicted on the days episode.

However despite all the high tech innovations and discoveries, many issues face mobile gambling. Common issues involves the difficulty in making sure that mobile gambling is controlled and that licences are secured. Another is during play wherein the process of offering varying betting odds are hard to achieve. Some other issues includes mobile payments, security and reliability.

Though placing bets through mobile phones is illegal in the United States much efforts are being done to promote mobile gambling. One way is promoting it in European market through the Eurotip, a pan- European organization which aims to ensure that operations are made legal in Europe. UK for instance launched O2 in July 2002 with the Cellectivity as their technology provider. Odds are made through different bookmakers like the Paddy Power, Ladbrokes and Blue Square.

Operating mobile gambling is made possible through the cooperation and partnerships made between the software providers and operators. In the O2 Germany world Cup for instance, mobile betting was made possible by Scaraboo which is a German software company and O2 as the operator. With these step taken by Germany, lottery and casino betting over mobile devices was made popular. Partnership was also made with such company as Vodafone and Ericsson.

In Asia, Hong Kong leads other countries in mobile gambling. With its gambling loving people Hong Kong takes horse racing as its favourite. Hong Kong Jockey Club set up its first mobile gambling service last November of 2000. It uses a special SIM-enabled tool kit from SchlumbergerSema with a WAP-based betting menu and a triple-DES based security scheme. Hong Kong this time operates with such companies as CSL, Orange, New World Mobility and SmarTone with each company providing its own kit to enable and provide betting options.

The future of mobile gambling is getting brighter each time. Operators and providers continuously devote their time in promotion and operation of mobile gambling as an alternative to other forms of gambling.