What makes an online casino good

Make no mistake; the online gambling market represents genuinely huge business in the digital age.

To provide some context around this, the gross gambling yield (GGY) for the remote sector was £4.7 billion in the year ending March 2017, while the market share for this sector also increased by 1.5% to 34%.

As a direct result of this growth, today’s generation of customers have access to a huge range of online casino sites and operators when selecting their favourite games. While this is undoubtedly a good thing, it can be hard for new players to identify the best online casinos and make an informed decision that benefits the overall experience.

In this article, we’ll ask what you should look for in an online casino and ask why these factors are important.

1. Identify the Best Bonus Packages

In order to remain competitive in the virtual space, brands have relied on increasingly lucrative and creative bonus packages to incentivise players.

You can identify the best casino bonuses on this website in real-time, and this should help you to determine the promotional offers that offer the most financial value.

These deals should be scrutinised further, however, as you look to prioritise any deals that suit your preferred games and appetite for risk.

Similarly, we’d also recommend giving additional weight to operators that offer a diverse array of bonus offers, including those that are aimed at both new and existing players. This way, you’ll enjoy cumulative bonuses of a far higher value, while being able to realise these over an extended period of time.

2. Determine what Games are Available

This is another important factor, and one that is particularly crucial for casual players who primarily access online casinos for fun and recreational purposes.

While the mere word ‘casino’ typically conjures up images of high-rolling professionals and bored millionaires, we must remember that virtual operators have made the market far more accessible in recent times.

With this in mind, the range of available games has become increasingly important over time, and this in an excellent metric for gauging the appeal of individual operators.

However, you’ll need to remember that each online casino will offer a different number of games in their available libraries, while the level of diversity associated with these titles will also vary considerably.

So, you should definitely take the time to review each operator’s library before making a decision, while paying special attention to any preferred genres or types of gameplay that appeal to you.

If you want to conduct a really detailed search, it may even be worth looking at the developers behind these games. After all, the software teams at brands such as NetEnt offer a virtual guarantee of quality, especially in terms of the graphics and level of animation that defines each title.

3. Is the Casino Certified and Reputable?

As we’ve already said, the remote gambling sector has achieved incredible growth over the course of the last decade or more. At the heart of this growth is slot gaming, which currently accounts for around 64.5% of the virtual market's GGY and provides the most accessible gameplay for casual players.

However, this incredible rate of growth has also incentivised less reputable platforms to enter the marketplace, creating a number of rogue operators who cannot be trusted to provide a safe and compliant gambling experience.

This means that you’ll need to take the time to verify any casino site that you access, and there are a couple of steps that you can take to achieve this objective.

Firstly, review the site to ensure that it is fully licensed and verified by the UK Gambling Commission (UKGC), as this is now an official piece of legislation that was passed as part of the Gambling Act revision of 2014. Similarly, take a look at the site and see whether or not it’s adequately safeguarded, as virtual gambling sites should be protected by at least 128-bit encryption.

Beyond this, we’d also recommend taking a look at third-party review sites online, as this will feature the independent opinions of players who have previously deposited their money, played games and made withdrawals. This can prove invaluable, especially if you’re struggling to find a site that you trust.

If the site is reputable, it should also list the return-to-player (RTP) rate associated with each game. This refers to the amount of money that players can expect to recoup per £1 stake and also highlights the prevailing house edge, and the UKGC demands that this is advertised clearly for each individual game.