Virtual sport betting has been growing at a rapid pace in recent years. Experts estimate industry's yearly turnover will soon exceed $10 billion. Gamblers can choose from a variety of virtual games including horse and motor racing, soccer, tennis, cycling and more. In upcoming months, SoftSwiss will start rolling out its own Virtual Sports betting portfolio, starting with Virtual Horse racing. This selection of initial game was not driven by commercial factors only. Ethical considerations also affected choice of virtual horse game as the starting entry.
Horses are noble elegant domestic animals that have lived near people for almost as long as humanity remembers itself. It is believed that they have been widely domesticated over 5,000 years ago. Horses were always valued for their speed, agility and endurance. First event of finding out the fastest horse out of a herd likely occurred soon after people started herding horses. As inseparable part of becoming an adult, children in nomadic tribes were taught to play horse games since early age. Besides brutal jousting, playing cool horse games was a great way for gallant knights to showcase their chivalry in front of dames.
Excitement of competition around such events introduced bet placement on horse racing and competitions. Horse race bets, once a grass-roots entertainment, eventually became fairly synonymous with horse racing. Later on, majority of horse race tracks got fitted with facilities enabling horse betting. Off track betting was initially prohibited but gradually paved its way into mainstream. Newspapers and telegraph enabled receiving news about betting odds and horse race results without personal presence. TV made it instantaneous and Internet allowed people to bet on horse racing online.
Nowadays, there is multitude of websites allowing their users to bet on horse races online. Other websites educate people on intricacies of online horse race betting, types of bets, odds et.c. A number of virtual horse games were developed to imitate live horse racing, giving urban children and adults a chance to envision a horse ride. Eventually, the concepts of virtual horse game and online horse race betting merged into virtual horse race betting.
Some would consider it odd to watch and bet virtual horse race instead of live horse racing online or on track. However, there is actually a strong ethical point in favor of virtual horse racing games. What many punters aren’t aware of is that competitiveness fueled by horse race betting makes it a very injury-prone and even lethal sport for both horses and jockeys. There are also numerous speculations that drugs are used to improve horses’ odds to win in races.
In 21st century, when developed societies no longer need their services in agriculture and transportation, isn’t it time people take a more humane approach to competitive horse racing as well? Just as dogs, isn’t it time we relieve them of their duty to exhaustively compete just so punters could engage in horse race betting both online and offline? Didn’t this old friend of humans earn the right to be just a companion for an occasional joy ride instead of risking injury just so gamblers could place their horse racing bets?
Our opinion is that in modern society virtual online horse betting can gradually take over real horse races. These adorable creatures more than deserved it by ages of loyal service on road, field, battleground and racetrack!
