Paypal seems to be slowly making its way back into the online gaming market. After being bought by Ebay in 2002 the payment processor was all but withdrawn from anything associated with online gaming.
But, circumstances and attitudes change. One particular thing that has focused the minds of everybody is the global economic downturn. This has caused a sea change in the attitudes among business and political decision makers.
Paypal’s latest move is a deal with payments company Neovia where Paypal will be offered as a method of payment to patrons of sites utilizing Neovia’s Netbanx payments gateway.
This is not the first movement we have seen from Paypal in recent times after the deal that was announced with 32Red online casino a couple of months ago.
This is also good news for consumers as Paypal is one of the most widely used forms of payment processing in the business to consumer sector on the Internet.
Its wider availability to consumers within the broader online gaming industry can only bee seen as a good thing for consumers. By extension this is good for the industry as well, both in the short term and also in terms of what it means in the context of broader acceptance over the longer term as well.
Dragonfish has just put together a deal with a South African traditional casino operator, Tsogo Sun. The deal will allow the company to bring online gambling into the jurisdiction.
Dragonfish is a business-to-business division of 888 Holdings and this is only one of a number of deals the division has done lately to operate various different partnerships to provide online gaming infrastructure.
Tsogo Sun is a large operator in the offline casino business in South Africa. The company runs several different casinos and resort destinations.
The deal follows a pattern that 888 has been following lately of entering new markets by coming to partnership arrangements with local operators.
The company has run into some difficulties with local regulatory bodies in the past when it has attempted to enter a new market. The company has obviously decided that entering new jurisdictions via the route of partnering with local operators is a better option in terms of a smooth passage.
The online gaming regulatory environment in South Africa has been in a bit of a state of flux for some time now and new legislation has recently been introduced. The full extent of the ramifications of these new regulations is still not 100% clear so this would seem to have been a far cleaner path into the market for 888.
Virgin Casino is the latest casino to sign up to offer CryptoLogic games to its patrons.
The announcement was made earlier today by CyyptoLogic at their headquarters in Dublin.
The initial offering from Virgin Casino will encompass ten CryptoLogic games and will include the Marvel Comics line that has been such a hit for the company for a long time now.
This means that the company is forging ahead with the promotion of this branded line of games even though the long term renewal future of the relationship with Marvel is in some doubt.
Virgin Casino is part of the very large Virgin Group so by any standards this is a very important relationship for CryptoLogic to be building.
This deal is just one of many that CryptoLogic has done in the last number of months as the company aggressively pursues its tactic of growing the brand and the company through high profile partnerships with some of the leading names in the retail consumer sector of the industry.
Illinois racetracks are causing all sorts of confusion for punters. What is causing the problem is the fact that the racetracks are offering online betting when most consumers are under the impression that online gambling of any kind is currently illegal because of the 2006 ban.
This confusion arises out of the fact that Governor of Illinois, Pat Quinn, signed a bill that allows racetracks in the state to accept bets online from customers who are resident in the state.
Concurrently, The U.S. Attorney General for Maryland, Rod Rosenstein, has set up a task force to crackdown on illegal online gambling with what would appear to be the full support of the federal government.
The clear remit of this task force is to tackle online gambling on a nationwide basis rather than just within the context of the state where it was formed.
This situation where consumers are picking up stories from the media where the viewpoints and practices of government bodies, law enforcement and legislators seem the be at odds with there counterparts elsewhere, is something that causes the average punter a great deal of confusion.
Of course, when looked at closely, the apparent contradictions start to make a bit more sense but the underlying point remains.
If there is new legislation and regulation of the industry within the borders of The United States soon, one of the major beneficial by-products is that it will leave ordinary people with a much clearer picture of where they stand.
A former U.S. presidential candidate has suggested that the current dire state of the economy and severe difficulties this is causing for the revenue streams of the Government means that now is the time to look at repealing the 2006 ban on online gambling.
Bob Barr was the candidate for The Libertarian Party in the 2008 Presidential election and has said the the potential amount of revenue that could be raised from the taxation of online gambling is far too large to ignore.
He maintains that now is the time to regulate the very profitable sector to raise much needed revenue. He has also cited an example in which if the U.S. government put a 2% levy on online gambling, that alone would have the potential to raise $5 billion a year.
Barr joins a growing number of people in political circles who have recognized that at a time of such a strong economic downturn, that such a large potential stream of income is not something that can be ignored.
This is obviously something that is being watched closely by the main players within the industry as well.
While jurisdictions within the European union do not have the same blanket ban as the United States, they too all seem to be lining up to create more workable legal frameworks to allow online casinos to operate.
The most central driving force that seems to be at the heart of this is the fact that in the current economic climate, governments all over the world are scratching their heads as to how to raise money to maintain public services.
As a result, the hugely profitable online casino industry is getting another look from countries that had either ignored it or actively discouraged it in the past.
Last weekend, The Sunday Times released the ninth annual Tech Track 100 league which lists the 100 fastest growing companies in the technology sector.
The league table, which is sponsored by Microsoft, is generally considered to be a fairly good indicator of what is happening in the tech sector.
While the table is released annually, it actually tracks and uses data from a three year period to make its calculations more stable.
This year Moneybookers has come in at number 6 on the list. As readers familiar with the online casino industry will already know, one of the areas in which Moneybookers is dominant is payment processing in the online casino market.
For the period in question, sales for the company increased from £1.7m to £27.4m and all of this translated into a huge growth rate of over 150%.
What also needs to be remembered and makes these numbers all the more impressive is that this is in spite of having to effectively pull out of the United States market after the 2006 online gambling ban came into effect there.
The company was founded in 2001 and after a big launch did see significant growth in the first couple of years but nothing as significant as the last few years.
With all the talk of the possible repeal of the online gambling ban in the U.S. which would allow the company to re-enter by far the biggest market, the future is looking very bright for Moneybookers.
The forthcoming French legislation that will open up the country’s market to non-national online casinos via a licensing system is being watched very closely by all of the major players in the U.K.
The domestic market in the U.K. has been a little on the stagnant side lately and the imminently opening French market could be just the ticket to allow these companies to continue with rates of growth that would not be possible in the U.K. market alone.
Even though the exact details that will eventually be settled upon for the French licensing system are still unclear, the British operators are still working to position themselves to make convincing applications once it becomes possible to do so.
Industry sources suggest that there is extensive planning and infrastructure placement going on in these companies right now to ready themselves for the battle for what is expected to be a relatively limited number of licenses.
In the meantime, the body that represents the traditional industry in France, Casinos de France, has initiated legal proceeding against many of the online casinos that would be expected to apply for currently operating online services within the jurisdiction without a license.
The timing of this could make things very tricky with regard to the issuing of online casino licenses.
Many of the expected applicants are likely to still have pending legal cases based on Casinos de France’s filings when the licensing window opens. Will these cases be taken into account as part of the application process? Will there be accusations of discrimination if they are?
These are just a couple of the many questions that are likely to be raised by this additional complication.
Whatever happens,the coming months are going to be an interesting time for the French online casino market.
With all the talk of the introduction of new legislation and the repealing of the ban in the United States, it’s easy to forget that law enforcement agencies are not the slightest bit interested in what might happen.
They operate on the basis of enforcing existing laws not guessing about new ones and with that in mind the Attorney General’s Office in Maryland has set up a new task force to pursue current online gambling that should not be taking place while the 2006 ban is still existent.
The U.S. Attorney General for Maryland, Rod Rosenstein, is a remnant of the Bush era but it is also suggested that the current administration is quietly supportive of his actions.
The broader work of the new task force will also include financial crimes such as mortgage and credit fraud but online gambling is also gong to be a major part of the its remit.
It is not yet clear as to what the main tactics of the task force may be but there is some evidence to suggest that targeting the online casinos and the institutions that handle payment precessing for them will be the central focus of the approach.
Only recently we had the situation where agents posed as customers in an attempt to sign up with Golden Casino. The agents were repeatedly turned down until eventually a customer service agent allowed one of them to complete the sign up process.
This was a very controversial tactic and many legal experts maintain that this amounts to entrapment. Given the controversy surrounding this approach, it is unclear as to whether this will be a tactic that is employed by the the new task force.
One thing is clear in that the industry is not going to get a free ride between now and whenever new legislation might be introduced.
The bill which was authored by Barney Frank to redefine the legislative and regulatory conditions for online casinos in the United States has been finding it hard to get traction for a while now.
Originally the bill did have quite a bit of positive momentum behind it but the onset of the global economic downturn changed all that as elected representatives and government officials turned their attention to the more pressing matter of the recession.
As anybody following the news will know, the hot topic in the news right now is President Obama’s healthcare reform.
Well, surprising as it might sound, the contentious issue of healthcare reform may be about to bring the topic of online casinos back into sharp focus again.
Senator Ron Wyden from the State Of Oregon has proposed repealing the 2006 act that outlawed online gambling and using the revenue derived from taxation of regulated online gambling to fund healthcare programs.
This idea is getting a lot of attention. It is a currently untapped source of income at a time when taxation revenue is very hard to come by. It is also a form a taxation that will not interfere with economic recovery.
Neither of these two points are new but when you add in the element of earmarking this revenue for healthcare, the whole concept seems to be finding favor with a lot of powerful people including some who were previously against the idea of repealing the 2006 ban.
Ultimately only time will tell if this is to be the tipping point but for now it has certainly put the subject of online gambling back into the public consciousness in a way that we have not seen for some time.
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The global economic downturn has affected the view of governments towards online casinos in two very distinct ways.
On the one had we have had stories of heavy handed law enforcement such as the crackdown in Holland.
On the other hand we have had almost every country in the western world taking another look at domestic and international laws governing the sector.
It would not seem to be an unreasonable idea to suggest that the very profitable nature of the industry and its ability to weather a recession is causing tax starved governments to look at how they might exploit the sector in a time when tax revenue everywhere else is drying up like a puddle in a desert.
Ireland, the country where CryptoLogic is based seems to be considering the possibility of introducing favorable legislation and an attractive taxation strategy with a view to becoming a hub for the industry like Gibraltar.
The Dutch government is awaiting the results of a review on the sector to see how it might leagislate and generate revenue.
Even though there is some confusion about implementation, Estonia is also looking to get in on the act and the Italian market is slowly opening up as well.
These are just a few examples of the very long list of countries that are looking for fresh ways to generate tax revenue.
Even the largest market of all the U.S. is showing signs that it is ready to take another look at the 2006 ban.
The last few months have been a turbulent time for the industry but it would seem that the current economic climate could breed a a far friendlier legislative climate for the industry in the coming months.
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