The UK Gambling Commission has recently released stats that demonstrate a rise in remote - online on home computers and web-capable mobile phone handsets - gambling.
While the Commission has reported a seemingly low increase in the amount of people gambling with games like the lottery and bingo online - just
0.1 per cent, it's proportional to the rise in the amount of people using their Internet-ready smartphones, which comes to almost 4.5 million, according to Ofcom's latest Communications Market Report.
Just 12% of the UGC's poll answered that, between September 2010 and June 2011, they had taken part in some form of remote gambling, with about 50% of those respondents giving the National Lottery as their chosen means of gambling.
And not only has the Lottery been doing well out of the recent gambling boom, but free online bingo hubs have been profiting, too - and at the expensive of high street gambling in big bingo halls, with a drop in patrons having been observed over the last year or so.
10.5% of respondents having stated that they had gambled remotely on devices such as computers and laptops, while an additional 3.2% had made use of their smartphone to gamble online, and gambling via a digital interactive TV set accounted for 1.4 per cent of those surveyed.
The UK Gambling Commission's study also found that over half - 56.7%, to be precise - of those respondents over 18 admitted to having taken part in some form of gambling activity up to one month before taking part in the poll.
This figure is slightly up on that found from the surveys of 2009 and 2010, in which 55.2% and 55.5% of respondents respectively gave the same answer.
The Minister of Tourism and Heritage, John Penrose, has called for change in UK gambling laws, suggesting that all gambling organisations, whether based in the UK or offshore, should require a UK Gambling Commission licence to ply their trade on the British Isles. The Minister hopes that, this way, those vulnerable members of the British public will be protected and discouraged from gambling indiscriminately on online gambling channels.
The Minister said: "The current system for regulating remote gambling doesn't work. Overseas operators get an unfair advantage over UK based companies, and British consumers who gamble online may have little or no protection depending on where the operator they deal with happens to be based.
"So our new proposals are an important step to help address concerns about problem gambling and to plug a regulatory gap, ensuring a much more consistent and higher level of protection for those people in the UK who gamble online.
"We will create a level playing field, so all overseas operators will be subject to the same standards and requirements as those based in Britain, as well as being required to inform the Gambling Commission about suspicious betting patterns to help fight illegal activity and corruption in betting."