Home / Poker News January 2009 / Online gambling to be legalized in Czech Republic
Online gambling to be legalized in Czech Republic
Posted by: James Carter. - Mon, 2009-01-05 04:39
It looks like online gambling and online poker (so unfairly included in the same category with the former again) will gain legal status in the Czech Republic soon. Fortuna Group, a company which offers live sports betting for the Czech Republic, has announced that it aimed to take its operation online, in order to be able to compete with foreign online sports betting companies which currently have unrestricted access to the Czech online gambling market.
Fortuna Group has also stated that it was bound to receive the online permit soon.
Basically, the problem that Fortuna Group and other Czech gambling companies are faced with is not the fact that foreign companies are present on the Czech market, it’s rather that unable to establish a legal online presence themselves, they are denied the means to compete against these companies on equal footings.
Fortuna may be able to offer legal online betting for the Czech public starting today, (January 5th 2008).
The Czech government has refused to legalize online gambling several times in the past for fear of the proliferation of underage gambling and addiction-related personality disorders. People of all ages can indeed access the internet and wager real money if they so wish provided there’s no efficient regulation in place.
The reason why the government may have changed its mind this time around is that Fortuna has come up with a truly efficient way to limit the access of those not yet of legal age on their website.
Those who intend to use Fortuna’s online wagering facilities will have to sign up at a land-based office first, where an ID will be required for the process. Since one will have to sign up in person, age verification will not be an issue.
Another tactic to weed out problem gambling adopted by Fortuna consists in their not accepting credit cards for payments.
Whether or not this approach will indeed yield the expected results for the Czech company remains to be seen, industry specialists already hail the move though as a successful precedent for the legalization of online gambling in other countries too.
