There is no sport as linked to the world of sports betting as horse racing. Take a trip to any race course in the world, and you will find hundreds of punters waving their betting slips in the air, cheering on their picks and crossing their fingers behind their backs. The best gambling sites will offer an array of horse betting markets and a selection of online casino offerings. The two worlds have become increasingly merged in recent years. Let’s take a look at the benefit of this.
A Larger Audience
The most obvious advantage of integrating horse racing with your online casino product is the increased audience you will gain. Horse racing is one of the most popular sports on the web to bet on, and many of these bettors could make a simple transition into the world of online slots.
From a business perspective, it is an ideal move and one that casinos are definitely looking to make. There are also plenty of advantages going the other way as well, as the integration may lead to casino players exploring horse racing betting markets.
How to Integrate Horse Racing and Casinos
One of the biggest questions, though, is what is the best way to integrate these two? Well, bookies and casinos have tried out plenty of different methods, and most of them have turned out to be a success.
A successful way to merge the two has been horse-racing-themed slot games. Plenty of top developers have looked to the world of horse racing for inspiration, and have found many aspects of the sport lend themselves well to slot games and bonus features.
The rise of virtual sports has also been huge in this department. While there are regular horse races taking place around the world, there was virtually none happening during the Covid-19 pandemic. This led to punters searching for ways to bet on their favourite sports.
Quickly filling that void, operators and developers started promoting virtual horse racing and other sports heavily. These races use similar technology to slots to determine a random winner from a list of pre-selected horses. The players are presented with odds and then watch the race unfold. It is as close to the real thing as possible, and it is gaining popularity. Virtual sports have largely avoided bonus features and special mechanics, ensuring that the races don’t feel too gimmicky, which was a concern many traditional horse racing bettors had about these kinds of games.
A New Way to Bet
Leave it to the American operators to find a new and exciting way of mixing horse racing with online casinos. With many states still restricting online casinos but having more liberal laws around horse racing, some operators have taken a very clever approach to this problem.
One such operator is b Spot, a site that uses real-life horse racing results to determine the results of an online slot game. In its simplest terms, players are betting on a horse race and then having the winners revealed through an online slot. This is an extremely clever approach, and it is one that has been incredibly popular among punters. It is also a model that we could see replicated down the line, as more operators look to find a way around betting restrictions and grab a slice of the lucrative US gambling market.
A lot of operators also look to link the two verticals by offering bonuses that feature both. Many bookmakers will offer horse-racing sign-up bonuses that also offer 50 free spins or a casino bonus that provides a free bet on selected races. Operators see the potential of merging the two.
Future technologies also look like they could change the way we gamble forever. Things like virtual realities and the metaverse could provide us with a more immersive horse racing and online casino experience than ever before.
A Match Made in Heaven
Take a trip to any top bookmaker or casino in the UK and you will find bettors watching horse races on TV and other customers spinning the reels or trying their chances in a game of blackjack. Casinos and horse racing have always gone hand in hand, existing right next to one another harmoniously.
As technology advances and customer demand change, top online casinos and gambling sites will continue to look for new ways to integrate horse racing and online casino games. Virtual sports and sites like b Spot are just the beginning, and you can expect to see many collaborations between the two in the future.
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