Around 2001, a number of the CFD providers realized that CFDs had the same economic effect as financial spread betting in the UK except that spread betting profits were exempt from Capital Gains Tax. Most CFD providers launched financial spread betting operations in parallel to their CFD offering. In the UK, the CFD market mirrors the financial spread betting market and the products are in many ways the same. However, unlike CFDs, which have been exported to a number of different countries, spread betting, inasmuch as it relies on a country-specific tax advantage, has remained primarily a UK and Irish phenomenon.