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When the British gambling conglomerate Ladbrokes International announced in August that it was pulling out of the casino business in the Americas and South Africa, it was not because the fabled bookie had experienced a road to Damascus conversion on the evils of gambling.

A different sort of revelation was behind the British Hilton Group subsidiary move--the realization that you can reach far more bettors electronically than on solid ground. It is shifting its resources to launch global betting operations via telephone, Internet and interactive television out of Gibraltar. Its site, www.Ladbrokes.com, will allow customers to place sports bets over the Internet beginning the first quarter of next year and will later include casino games like roulette and blackjack.

Websites currently bring in only a fraction of the revenues earned by casinos, but business is booming and online gambling is expected to generate revenues of about $10 billion by the year 2002. The boom in business has left government regulators scrambling to deal with sites like the online bookmaking service sportingbet.com founded by a farmer's son from Hertfordshire in England. The site skirts local regulations on online gambling, accepting wagers from punters in 72 countries, including Americans betting on U.S. sports like football, baseball, basketball and hockey.

American law prohibits bets on sports events in most states and the Internet Gambling Prohibition Act, sponsored by U.S. Senator Jon Kyl, proposes to create an electronic wall around the U.S. But since sportingbet.com is based in the Channel Islands and Mark Blandford, its founder and chairman, is not a U.S. citizen the site is--at least for the moment--escaping the long arm of U.S. law enforcers. The site is also thumbing its nose at British tax authorities, who require U.K. punters to either fork out 6.75% up front on wagers or pay even more on winnings. It is set up in Aldernay, part of the British Isles but not part of the U.K. and thus not subject to British taxes.

Victor Chandler International, a well-known British phone bookmaking operation, will launch a competing Internet gambling site from Gibraltar in January: victorchandler.com will target Europe, but like sportingbet.com aims to get about 50% of its business from the U.S. and about 20% from Asian bettors.

Meanwhile, the Australian online sports bookmaking site Centrebet is targeting European punters, accepting bets on sports like Norwegian ice hockey in, among other things, four different Scandinavian languages and currencies (www.centrebet.com). But even though gambling sites are burgeoning, few controls exist over current casino games, making it difficult for consumers to be sure of the odds or even of a pay-out. Most casinos encourage gamblers to set up accounts via credit card. As you gamble money is credited or debited. Accor, the French hotel and travel group which operates 10 casinos inside France, will eventually jump into online gambling but is waiting until regulatory issues are resolved and for the development of a system of secure financial transactions before launching a global online casino site.

"It is evident we are not going to let this opportunity pass us by," says Nicolas Ricat, director of marketing at Accor Casino. The only sure-fire online bet these days is that every other company in the gambling business feels the same way.

With reporting by MAIRI BEN BRAHIM/London