Slow legislation process regarding the e-gaming market in Italy nevertheless created one of the most concise and largest markets in Europe. The betting industry has come first, followed by internet poker. Finally, online casino sites have been announced to be coming into the market through Microgame, an already licensed and legally operating company in the Italian market.
Online casino sites are believed to have a huge potential within Italy and Europe as a whole.
Chinese government has always believed that censorship and filtering are absolutely acceptable. The recent restrictions in place turned out to be not as severe as the planned filtering ban of last year, however, they are supposed to weed out all illegal online casino gambling activity.
Any internet business offering games within the Chinese market should not violate the social morals and laws of the country. In addition to that, a new ID program is in place and all internet gaming companies should implement a real name identification program that verifies the age and places restrictions on the amount of online game play each person can engage in.
The idea of possibility to regulate the global online casino gambling industry hit the Japanese government once, at the time of global economic recession, though the idea was never materialized, thus leaving internet gambling illegal in Japan.
Illegal is still taking place in the country, that’s why the arrest of three individuals accused in participation in an illegal online casino gambling ring has been surprising. The ring has been under investigation for quite some time, but the portable nature of the online casinos and the industry as a whole made it hard for police to pinpoint them. The illegal online casino let the minors play and wager at the sites without any age checks and safeguards.
However, there is one point the police are not sure about: what to do with the nine internet gamblers who were gambling at these sites.
35 packages to attend Munich’s world-famous Oktoberfest and $75,000 in cash will be awarded during a special leaderboard challenge promotion recently announced by PartyPoker.com.
The four-week promotion starts on August 2 and is exclusive to Palladium Lounge members only. Its four winners will get $2,000 and 1,000 points each, the runners-up – $1,500 in cash and 975 points, while the third place winners will get $1,200 and 950 points. To say more, all the participants who finish in the top 100 will receive cash prizes, while points will be awarded all the way down to the 500th spot.
35 top players will get two-night accommodation with breakfast at a five-star hotel in Munich for themselves and a friend and two passes to Oktoberfest party. Special dinner, an open bar, poker tournament in the Davidoff Lounge and entry to a VIP party at Pasha, as well as an activity or spa treatment are also part of an award.
The UK liberalized gambling regulations resulted in the fact that now online casinos sites have to ensure that all of the messages leaving the gambling group should correspond with the strict standards laid out by the Advertising Standards Authority in the UK. The messages should not be misleading and contain over-sells for their gaming products.
One of William Hill’s email marketing messages about the currently running new bonus promotion has been recently called out by the ASA. The complaint was initiated because of vague details, key details and requirements left out of the Will Hill emails.
Will Hill’s entire email campaign had to be abandoned.
Online casino gambling in China is illegal, and it is not a surprise that at the moment raids and arrests of very high profile gambling rings are taking place.
One of the latest raids has turned out to be the most successful – several employees from the Baidu Search Engine have been arrested (after Google pulled out of the market in China, Baidy became the largest search alternative in the country.
In accordance with official reports, the arrested employees worked in the company to illegally manipulate the search results to let “777 Real Online Casino” site pop up in the search results.
The Baidu company claims that the company has received money for advertising only, not for SEO manipulation. Baidu thinks the accused employees accepted the bribe which is completely outside of the company’s ethos and policies.
Baidu has officially apologized.
After severe criticism, the Cyprian government has slowed down on attempts to block online casinos. However, there are reports saying that the government has announced a new tax program requiring all Cyprian gamblers to pay higher taxes on their winnings.
No doubt the Cyprian government has found a perfect way to collect more money for the country’s budget. According to the new policies, a Cyprian gambler who has won money gambling online will have to claim these winnings on their personal taxes as a source of income. Previously, online casinos paid out winnings without reporting winners to the government. Now, it is clear, that the winners who have not registered their winnings will face numerous fines and penalties.
Practice of banning online casinos has proven to be ineffective in a number of countries where illegal online gambling is thriving. Despite the fact that the banning policy is ineffective, countries don’t want to admit the defeat and abandon bans.
The USA have made one of the first attempts to create gambling regulations, however, the controversial system didn’t prove to be a success.
Russia was the next country on the list who considered the issue, but the major concern for the government was the well developed land gambling industry rather than online. The land venues were pushed out of the cities, thus causing the appearance of an underground land market complimented by unregulated internet gambling.
Now, Australia and China are trying some blocks that are not working either. Ineffective monopolies can also be found in some European countries. However, the solution is clear: site regulation and licensing.
It is not a secret that Google has been banning internet gambling ads for years. Recently, the company has changed their policies, and in accordance with them, now, online gambling advertising is allowed on an exclusive, limited only to verified 18 and up users section of YouTube.
Naturally, there are lots of critics of that entrance into the online gambling advertising industry, but Google do their best to assure everyone that the age verification software is good enough not to allow underage viewers and makes advertising strategy for internet gambling companies more targeted.
Bronislaw Komarowski, the newly elected Polish president, is believed to have a liberal viewpoint regarding online casinos and is thought to be looking for ways to legalize and regulate the online casino industry within Poland to generate more revenues for the state budget.
The former president, Lech Kaczynski, who died in a tragic plane crash earlier this year, attempted to block, ban and filter internet gambling and questionable sites. No wonder, his twin brother, Jaroslaw, who took part in the race for the presidency against Komorowski, was feared to follow his brother’s steps in the way of handling online casino gambling situation.
Pro-online casino gambling supporters hope that Komorowski will change internet policies in Poland and that will definitely help the country fully enter the European Union.