If you want to play backgammon with real money I strongly advise you to visit Play65 which is where I play backgammon and I am very happy with them. It is one of if not the largest backgammon sites on the net which allows play with real money.
But should one really consider backgammon gambling? Sure, it does have elements of luck and it is played with dices, but in the long run it is a skill game and in most countries it is not classified as gambling. But it is very very exciting none the less!
England has a long history of backgammon, but how come there are so few great players from there? I can give you a quick answer which might hold part of the key to the answer of this question - they classify it as gambling, thus it gets much more difficult to get permissions to arrange tournaments about money there. It's really sad, everyone who has played the game for some time knows that backgammon is not gambling.
Happily enough most of us live where backgammon online or offline isn't classified as gambling. Even if you are from England you can play online with no problems since it is only illegal to arrange games to make a profit without proper permissions, to play is not a problem and if you play online you won't have any problems finding opponents either. But I think you should buy a cheap board and play a little with your friends too, it is funny to play in real life. Anyway, try out Play65 a little and see what you think.