Casino City's iGaming Pocket Directory - 2013 Edition

Sponsored by JURISDICTIONS 103 Visit iGamingPocketDirectory.com for more information. While growth in the online gaming industry has been driven by innovation, regulation in the online gaming industry has been moved from highly progressive and innovative to more traditional and less lucrative. Part of that is the natural maturation of an industry. When an industry grows rapidly, and generates billions in revenue, governments look for ways to monetize that revenue stream. And part of it is the sheer nature of gambling policy throughout the world. Traditionally, the regulation of gambling had been the purview of individual nations. Each nation took a different approach to regulating brick-and-mortar casinos. That was acceptable because each society had different tolerance levels – social, political and cultural – for gambling. And because the gambling industry generated immense amounts of cash, and governments wanted to keep as much of that money for themselves that they could. That desire for cash manifested itself in different forms. In some countries (e.g., France and Sweden), state-run or state-protected monopolies controlled the gaming industry. In other countries (e.g., England), it was high tax rates. The early days of online gaming upset this paradigm. The borderless nature of the Internet allowed punters to place bets outside their home markets, often at better prices than they could find in their home markets. IGAMING JURISDICTIONS OVERVIEW