Ban Does Not Seem to Matter
October 11, 2009
Russia has been trying to ban online gambling because they feel that it has become an epidemic within their country. In 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union, slot machines quickly spread beyond their normal gaming halls to shops and malls and at one point came close to outnumbering the population itself. Casinos had rapidly multiplied, and gambling had become a force to be reckoned with.
In 2006 then Pres. Vladimir Putin decided to crack down on the gambling industry as he felt it was not worth the small amount of money that they got from it. In fact once those casinos had been eliminated tax revenues were down roughly ½%. He said that the health of the nation was more important than what little revenue they got from them.
However Moscow authorities are now worried about online gambling as Internet cafés which are providing access to these online gambling sites have started multiplying across their nation. They have seen a major increase since July in the number of online gambling cafés that are allowing this access to their citizens.
They believe that this may be in part to a restriction that has been placed on the country where casinos have been relegated to other locations that are fairly far away from the city itself. In place of these casinos, their citizens are turning to online gambling instead. Where they used to go to the casinos to gamble, instead they are turning to these cafés to get their online gambling fix.
