When the UK government finalized the legislation that established the modern gaming sector, moral panic over planned "supercasinos" led to the proposal being scrapped. Up to 40 were whittled down to just one in Manchester, before Gordon Brown caved in to media pressure and abandoned the idea.

The flurry of gambling company results due out this week will show how the spotlight shone in the wrong place. Smartphones hit the market at roughly the same time as the 2005 Gambling Act came into force. We now live in a society where everyone has a 24-hour casino in their pocket.

Entain, owner of Ladbrokes; Flutter, which owns Paddy Power; and Gamesys, the firm behind Virgin Games and other brands, all have financial results out over the next few days. Investors will be watching to see whether a pick-up in online casino play during the pandemic, when betting shops and bricks-and-mortar casinos were shut, has endured or even accelerated. But the UK isn’t really where the big action is.

For Entain and Flutter in particular, America is where it’s at. Since the supreme court overturned a ban on sports betting, the market has been opening up state by state. Tens of billions are being spent as firms jockey for a leading position in a market that looks like it could be even more lucrative than anyone thought.

The reason US firms are so keen on British betting companies is that the UK market is one of the world’s most mature, having grown rapidly in both size and complexity since that 2005 Gambling Act. They are willing to pay a premium for ready-made expertise, rather than develop it over years themselves and run the risk of getting it wrong. William Hill has already fallen, to MGM’s fellow Las Vegas casino operator Caesars Entertainment.

Interestingly, Caesars has no interest in UK bricks and mortar. It is keen to offload William Hill’s high street betting shops and last week sold its 11 British casinos for an undisclosed sum to the US hedge fund Silver Point.