UK gambling sites ready to deal with surge of US players
Should the US legalise online gambling, then according to a report from Site Confidence, UK sites are ready to deal with the extra players.
New research has been published by Site Confidence, who specialise in website performance and load testing, which shows that UK gambling websites could take advantage of a surge in traffic from American players if the US legalise online gambling.
Site Confidence is part of the NCC Group, an independent escrow solutions, assurance testing and consultancy firm. They have said that UK gambling websites had a 99.91% availability rate over June and July, this means an average downtime of only 1h19m.
They also said that the average download speed across UK gambling sites was four seconds, half of the desired benchmark of eight seconds.
Bob Dowson the Director for Site Confidence said, “A return for online gambling in the US could be a real boost for the UK gambling industry. However, competition in the space is already fierce with merger and acquisition activity including the recent merger of PartyGaming and Bwin and continued speculation surrounding 888 fuelling providers’ drive towards optimum website performance. This competition will only increase as new US providers get in on the act. In turn, it is essential that UK gambling sites can cope with increased traffic and provide a seamless user experience to avoid losing visitors to rivals, which are only a click away. Our research illustrates that UK gambling sites are already offering a strong user experience. In addition, a notable lack of prolonged downtime, particularly during a period that included the 2010 FIFA World Cup, suggests that Internet gambling providers have built necessary capacity to cope with high volumes of traffic and are load testing ahead of expected hikes in visitor volumes. On this evidence, providers have strong foundations to build on in order to respond to increased traffic from the US and competition from new American and enlarged European companies. However, it is likely that increased US traffic will require additional load testing to cope with expected volumes, particularly immediately after legalisation.”
