The Surprising Rise of Social Casinos

The Surprising Rise of Social Casinos
The Surprising Rise of Social Casinos. Photo by Kvnga on Unsplash

Talk to most casino gamers, and they’ll probably tell you that they play games like slots, roulette and blackjack as it offers them a fun way of making some money. However, it seems that social casinos provide gamers with an equally enjoyable way to play – for fun.

That’s right, in the past decade there have been many social casino sites launched online where people play slots and table games but they don’t actually make any real money winnings. So how have these social casino sites grown to be so popular?

What are social casinos?

Social casino sites simply offer gamers a way to play all of the casino games that you’d get from any of South Africa’s physical casinos, but here you do it all for free and you can enjoy gaming from the convenience of a computer, tablet or smartphone.

The fact that you don’t play with real money means that you are at no risk of losing any cash, and it also means that social casinos can frequently operate in areas where real money gambling is outlawed. As such, we can now see social casino sites now operating in large swathes of the US where standard real money online casinos are still outlawed.

How people play at social casinos

So how do people actually play at social casinos? Well, most social casino sites will simply use some kind of virtual credit rather than real money for your stakes. For example, the FC coins that you get with the Fortune Coins no deposit bonus let you play a variety of slots and table games without it costing you a single penny.

Obviously you can’t win any real money by playing with virtual credit, but some social casinos have found a way of letting people win prizes by taking part in the games. This is because such casinos use a sweepstakes format where prizes such as gift cards and merchandise can be redeemed if you happen to be a randomly chosen winner.

As a result, you’ll see social casinos hosting a variety of giveaway tournaments on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. Often it just requires the customer to answer some very basic trivia questions to get entered into a prize draw.

Apart from the use of virtual credit, most social casino games will play the same as people experience at regular casinos. This means that players get to pick from a variety of slot games that come in a variety of themes, as well as multiple variants of classic table games such as baccarat, roulette and blackjack.

What is the future of social casinos?

Social casino gaming seems to be here to stay. This is largely because most people simply love to play classic slots and table games against friends and family and social casino sites give them a quick and convenient way to do so. Obviously, there is no option to win massive jackpots like one lucky gamer recently did in Cape Town, but this is a pretty rare occurrence anyway, and most people simply enjoy playing for fun.

It remains to be seen how social casinos will evolve as regular real money casino gaming becomes much more widespread. After all, we have already seen standard casino sites becoming legalized in many US states which was unthinkable just a decade ago. Early indications are that social casinos and regular casino sites can happily exist alongside each other because some people want to play for real money and other people merely want to play for fun. All of which suggests a bright future for social casino gaming.