| | |  | Last Updated: Tuesday, June 19, 2007 |  | | | Gambling Commission Unveils Online Casinos Legislation
- Sunday, 28 May 2006
The UK Gambling Commission has recently published rules designed to govern the proposed new generation of land-based and online casinos in Britain. Restrictions on alcoholic beverages, licensing dealers, and the provision of help for problem gamblers are just some of the measures operators of land-based and online casinos will be required to implement. Contravention of some of these rules may lead to the annulment of operating licenses and hefty fines. The new laws have gone some way to reassuring those opposed to the legalization of online casinos that the government and the Gambling Commission will be holding the industry on a tight rein.
The Gambling Commission’s chairman, Peter Dean, has said that the Commission has used international experience to make sure that standards of social responsibility among current and future gambling operators are the highest in the world. In 2005, approximately £53 billion was invested in gambling activities and a large part of that was at online casinos. An estimated one million individuals regularly gamble at online casinos and the industry as a whole has grown at a phenomenal rate in Britain since 2001. The 2005 Gambling Act which will change the way online casinos operate in Britain is scheduled to come into force in September 2007.
Since many critics of the new legislation reportedly expressed fear that the proposed gambling expansion could increase problem gambling rates, the number of authorized regional super-casinos was reduced to one. Strict control has also been maintained on advertisements promoting the online casinos industry. The Act gives the Gambling Commission the power to police all live and online casinos across the UK.
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