Paper short abstract:

Gambling in Europe is characterized by, one the one hand, globalizing technology and international operators and, on the other, locally distinctive markets and national legislation. This paper uses the example of the UK online gambling industry to explore this supranational phenomenon.

Paper long abstract:

The way we gamble has changed, bringing down boundaries between states, different sports and games, between gambling and other kinds of financial risks. Until the 1990s, commercial gambling was limited to 'bricks and mortar' sites including casinos, betting shops and racecourses. Today, up to thirty per cent of people betting online do so using their phones or handheld devices: access to a huge variety of products is virtually instant. The way we measure and regulate gambling, based on national surveys and statistics, has fallen behind.

The UK is the most mature regulated remote gambling jurisdiction in Europe, worth £896 million (Gambling Commission 2009). However, levels of taxation have limited growth of the industry and the majority of sites offering online gambling to UK customers are licensed in Gibraltar, Malta and the Isle of Man. The structural arrangements of the industry reflect the peculiar contemporary status of gambling and its controversial history in the UK. Gambling is a part of everyday life, through the National Lottery (since 1994) and licensed betting shops (since 1961), but it is also incompletely domesticated. It still represents a challenge to the values of thrift and hard work that have traditionally been considered a part of British identity.

Focusing on an offshore server, tracing and accounting for the connections it creates and severs, I will show how an anthropological toolkit can help us to better understand the UK remote gambling industry as a dispersed phenomenon.