Online Casino Use Rises in Russia
The Russian government is seriously concerned that the government may have acted
a bit hastily with the introduction of gambling banning legislation that shut
down land casinos and betting parlors throughout all of the major cities. The
legislation opened up for remote areas of the country where the land gambling
establishments were able to reopen shop and offer land gambling activities but
the current convoluted processing of licenses as meant that many gambling
companies are instead looking toward new technologies as a way to open up new
revenue streams within the Russian market.
The Deputy Mayor in Moscow, Sergei Baidakov, may have hit the issue right on the
head with his observation that the current influx of online casinos targeting
the market and an increase in instant lottery ticket sales are the “by-product
of imperfect legislation." Russia implemented the new bans on land gambling
earlier this year and it didn’t take the previous land gambling establishments
to find ways to still stay active in the gambling industry and continue
generating revenue – now though the government isn’t getting a very big cut of
those gambling revenues.
In addition to the popularity of instant lottery sales that are taking place at
the lottery machines that have cropped up all over the country, internet cafes
are now offering Russians access to the online casino gambling sites as a way to
still enjoy gambling as a pastime while circumventing the Russian government’s
ban on land gambling in the country. Land gambling is still entirely illegal
outside of the designated areas and the major cities are doing all that they can
to seek out illegal gambling and slots halls and shut down the establishments
while also seizing the machines. The new trend toward online technologies though
is a whole other issue that is not yet addressed by Russian legislation. |