Football slot games

Online gambling is big business and sports betting in particular has seen some phenomenal growth since the turn of the century.

The biggest players in the UK such as William Hill, Ladbrokes, bet365 and Paddy Power regularly advertise on UK TV. However, in late 2018, the Remote Gambling Association (RGA, which consists of the companies above) agreed a self-imposed whistle-to-whistle ban on TV advertising during Premier League football matches. The agreement came into force for the start of the 2019/2020 football season.

As betting evolves, so do the punters, with more and more fans now deciding to play slots online as a quick and immediate alternative to match betting. Most large casino websites offer this interesting variation in traditional slot machines with wagers being placed online and winning paid out immediately, if the slots spin your way.

These football slots are a popular spin (pardon the pun) on traditional slot machines with bars, fruit and lucky number 7s being replaced with exciting football related imagery including balls, goals, referees, red cards and the like.

The history of slot machines can be traced back to 1890s New York City where a mechanical version of poker was very popular. A few years later, a San Francisco based company developed a machine which could automatically pay out a customer's winnings. Slot machines became a firm favourite in bars across America where they were lovingly referred to as One Arm Bandits thanks to the physical lever pulled to spin the wheels. Over in the UK, these slot machines were often called Fruit Machines in England and Wales, or “Puggies” in Scotland.

Fast forward 100 years and the first online casino launched to the world in 1994 - meaning we've now been able to get our gambling fix at the tips of our fingers for a quarter of a century.

It's really big business in the UK now. According to the Gambling Commission, the gaming industry is worth £14.5bn per year - that's the equivalent of all 66 million people in the country gambling £220 each. An impressive 14% of the country's total gaming spend is on online slots - a staggering £2bn is wagered this way every year, that's the equivalent of £5.5m gambled every day, almost a quarter of a million pounds every hour, or £70 per second.

All in all, the UK gaming industry employs over 106,000 people through almost 8,500 shops, over 1,600 licenced arcades, 650 bingo halls and over 150 casinos scattered across the country.

Offline slots are also growing in popularity with the latest figures reporting a 4% uplift in the number of physical machines - over 183,000 gaming machines can now be found in the UK.

But it's online which is seeing the real growth with Statista predicting the global market to more than double in value, from 2017 revenues of $45.8bn up to a whopping $94.4bn in 2024.

With this much growth and this many great football slots to play, there's never been a better time to get spinning!