Spend 10 minutes on social media, and you’ll no doubt see an advert or sponsored content endorsing online slots. Or just go about your day-to-day life and you’ll see reference to slots everywhere, whether it be in the form of a radio or TV advert, a billboard or simply overhearing people talking about their slots strategy.
It’s obvious then that there is something about slots, particularly the online variety, which appeals to the masses, but what is it? Why are these games – which are essentially shiny, spinny reels – so goddamn popular? Read on to find out…
The Facts and Figures
You might have an inquiring mind and not be inclined to trust us at face value when we tell you that online slots are incredibly popular, but that’s fine. Kudos to you for not believing everything you read unless it’s backed up with cold, hard facts.
Cold, hard facts like these…
●Last year in the United Kingdom the Gross Gambling Yield was £14.1 billion
●£3.9 billion of that came from the remote sector (online casinos etc) with the rest coming from lotteries, sports betting and land-based casinos
●69.3% of that figure (£2.7 billion) came from online slot games
●That puts online slots’ gross gambling yield for last year £1.6 billion higher than the total figure for football betting and £2 billion higher than the yield for horse racing
●That means that, excluding lotteries, online slots are the single biggest contributors to British gambling revenues
The Why
Now we know The What, it’s time to figure out The Why. Why are online slots so popular? How do they captivate audiences?
Why do they appeal to seemingly every demographic of players? Well, here’s more than a few reasons:
Simplicity
After reading this article, download an online casino app and try and drop straight into a game of baccarat. Or craps. Or even something much simpler like poker or roulette and then come back here and let us know in the comments section how you got on.
Chances are you’ll have fared pretty badly – unless, of course, you’re a dab hand at any of those games – because they are all pretty hard games to get your head around. To enjoy them and actually win money, you have to be completely aware of the rules and have at least a basic understanding of the various strategies involved in each game.
With slots, there’s no such barrier to enjoyment. What is there to understand? You log in, open a game, pick your wager and start spinning the reels. It really is that simple and as every good business person will tell you, simplicity is the key to more sales.
Entertainment
Poker is quite often a boring game. There can be long periods in which you literally have nothing to bet on and have to wait and wait for the gambling gods to deal you better cards. Likewise, with blackjack and almost any other casino game you can think of, apart from slots.
Slot machines are always exciting and always engaging. You can’t look away because you could miss something. You could be on your last penny and still win a life-changing amount of money. In short, online slots capture people’s attention, which is no mean feat in today’s world.
Affordability
The average person in the UK spends only £141 a year on gambling. Can you imagine how quickly that money would go if you were playing roulette or blackjack? It would be spent before you could even think about it.
That money would stretch a lot, a lot further if you were playing slots, though. Not only could you wager from as little as a penny a go – there are even plenty of free-to-play slots online with real cash prizes – but you stand to lose less than you would from playing other table games.
Every slot you see has a Return to Player (RTP) percentage, which tells you, on average, how much money you would see returned to you for every £100 wager. Typically, these figures are in the mid-90s, meaning a long session spinning the reels might only cost you £4 or £5.
In Summary
Online slots are The Premier League of the gambling world. They are the thing that get people going, get them excited and draw them to online gambling sites and apps and that’s for all of the reasons listed above, and more!
Without them, we could be living in a world in which gambling in general, never mind just the online variety, was a niche activity reserved for high-rollers and mathematics nerds. Instead, we live in a world where at this very moment, as you read this very sentence, hundreds of millions of people are spinning the virtual slot reels in every corner of the planet.
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