Chancellor Gordon Brown's Budget came with a welcome sigh of relief from bookmakers up and down the country after the betting duty was finally abolished.

The reason for the Government's move was due to the threat of offshore betting which offers the punters the luxury of tax-free betting.

The hope is that more people will be attracted, once again, to betting shops in Britain to have a flutter, without having to pay the additional charge of 9% to the Government's coffers.

But sections of the online betting industry are adamant that people would far prefer to gamble from the comfort of their own home then venture to smoke-filled betting shops.

This new internet age has allowed for a new breed of "armchair punters".

Having once become a member of the online betting site, the customer can have a flutter on a wide selection sports and events, such as "How Many Majors will Tiger Woods win in 2001?" to "Will Britney Spears have a baby this year?".

Company's such as sportingbet, Bluesq.com and the more renowned Ladbrokes have established themselves as major players in the market.

BlueSq.com took proactive measures to what they believed would be the inevitable abolishment of betting duty, by allowing their customers to bet tax-free two weeks before the Chancellor's announcement.

Press officer Ed Pownell explained why his company took that chance.

"Our turnover has been fantastic recently so it was not a great deal to us to remove tax altogether and it helps the customers realise that they do not have to wait until January 2002 to have a tax-free punt," he said.

Pownell added that online betting will probably not result in punters leaving the bookmakers for the home computer, but instead will mean that less people choose the option of offshore telephone betting.