Comparison study of the odds offered by European gambling monopolies throughout the FIFA World Cup

[jay43uk]

Hi, I found this interesting hopefully I've put it in the right place .

http://www.right2bet.net/docs/Right2...p%20Report.pdf

[Nintendo2k]

Yes I read this in the EGR Magazine a few days ago actually and it was pretty interesting. I am not surprised at all though.

Countries have gambling monopolies are used to only getting poor odds and wagering options. I am lucky enough to live in a cuntry that has a state bookmaker with poor odds and wagering options. I almost never bother to use them. Not only because they offer poor odds, but also because they only offer single bets on very few events every day.

It really is a sad state of affairs but I do not foresee much of a change. At least not in my country where we have passed a ban on all online gambling transactions (offline too actually, could have problems paying for stuff in hotels/shops/whatever where they offer gambling).

I know that quite a few countries are restricting what bookmakers are allowed to target their residents. For instance Sweden will not allow bookmakers without a swedish licence to advertise there at all. Ireland have passed a law (I think anyway) that allows the government to tax the gambling operators as per a licencing fee. As I understand it, the government of Ireland has said that they will be taking steps to prevent their residents from using online gambling operators that are not licenced in Ireland. I think the situation in France is similar to that.

Several european nations are considering monopolizing, take licencing fees from operators or tax the clients on winnings. I know I read somewhere that Greece was looking in to how to get their claws on some of the money in the online betting market, but not sure if they wanted to go after the operators or the punters.

Edit -
Here is the article regarding the irish tax/licencing regime. It was pretty recent actually:
http://www.egrmagazine.com/news/5312...e-regime.thtml

Not sure where I read that "they will take steps" to prevent irish residents from using other, non-licenced operators. That would probably be bad for a lot of the users on this site.

[wobbler]

Wow great reading mate, I see the Germans get a right caning with their returns.

[jay43uk]

How would they stop people signing up to online bookmakers ? If gambling is banned is it illegal to open an account with an offshore online bookmaker? Or is it up to the bookmaker to restrict clients from them jurisdictions?

[Nintendo2k]

Well there are several things that could happen.

Americans can't sign up to most european bookies. This is a very special case though. Betting is not illegal (in all the states anyway), but it is illegal for the financial institutions to facilitate transactions with gambling operators. For the case involving the US, you can read up on the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) or the Safe Port Act.

This means that credit card companies and others would block these transactions. After reading up on this though you will find that a lot of the gambling operators have put in place countermeasures so that americans can still use their CC's as per normal.

Americans also had access to ewallets a few years ago, but they have since been blocked from using services such as Neteller and Moneybookers. You may be wondering why, as clearly it is not illegal to use a MB account? The thing is though, the americans have a particularly strict interpretation of the law, and they enforce it rigorously.

Gary Kaplan, the founder of the now dead sportsbook BetOnSports, was arrested under the federal wire act. He was not physically in the US, but he was arrested somewhere in the caribbeans and transferred in to US custody.

So that is why Moneybookers, Neteller and other operators left. This also meant that all (?) of the UK bookies stopped offering services to americans. You can read Sportingbet's statement here:
http://www.sportingbet.com/s/pdf/press_sbet.pdf

If they had not done this, then their CEOs (and other involved parties) could face criminal charges in the US, so they could never go there without the risk of being put on trial. It would also be very dangerous to go to countries that are likely to extradite people into american custody.

So in this regard, it was the bookies that decided to block americans from signing up. However we have also seen the opposite. I believe that in Israel, gambling websites are blocked by the government.

I can only speculate, but if I am correct and that I actually read that Ireland would be "taking steps" to prevent unlicenced operators to offer services to Irish residents, what could potentially happen is:

1. Ireland blocks transactions to the unlicenced operators. (American style)
2. Ireland blocks access to unlicenced operators. (Israel style)
3. The gambling websites voluntarily say that they will not take Irish customers as they are not licenced, just as a lot of gambling sites will not accept customers from Turkey, Israel, America and so on.

Here in Norway we have a similar system to that in America (we can't use CC+++). Wagering on the Internet is not illegal at all, however Sportingbet have now stopped offering services to Norwegian clients. Sportingbet Australia have stopped taking new signups from Norway, but they had as of last week not blocked us from wagering. Other bookmakers have been pushing alternative payment methods like Moneybookers, Neteller, and so on, but Sportingbet went against everyone here. I suspect that they wanted to get rid of the Norwegian customer service department and those costs, as business from Norwegians would go down quite a lot. In the processs they just figured they would get rid of all of us

These are all the extremes though. Since Ireland, Greece, Sweden and other countries are talking about licencing, it is obvious that they still consider wagering on the Internet to be legal, they just want a piece of the pie. How ar they are willing to go is yet to be seen.

I know we have one or two Dutch users on this site, and I know that there is an interesting legal situation surrounding online betting there. If they read this, it would be interesting to read a post on what is going on and what experiences they have to go around the system.

[Odysseus]

. I am lucky enough to live in a cuntry

Methinks I'd like to live there too!

[Sliphod]

I stopped reading that article after I read this bit on the 3rd bullet point.

"The ‘Perfect Bettor’ forced to bet..."

Forced to bet?

Is that with a gun to the head, "You must bet on Arsenal to win this weekend"