Gambling Act 2005 and Online Bingo

In the UK the new Gambling Act of 2005 was implemented in September 2007, prior to this, and gaming including cash bingo and online bingo were regulated by the Gaming Act of 1968, as you would probably realize the Act of 1968 was in no way set up to accommodate the likes on online bingo in any size, shape or form. The most notable feature of the Act of 1968 was that no cash bingo was allowed to take place outside of a licensed premise, barring a few exceptions such as institutions such as social clubs that fell under a varied range of criteria within clause 40, and within clause 41, bingo that took place for charitable causes. Due to this, most online bingo operators had to run their businesses from countries outside of the UK in order not to contravene this.

This in no way means that online bingo operators are not regulated, this is not the case at all, they have to be licensed and regulated according to the laws of the country that they run their operations from. For example, Gibraltar is governed by the gaming legislation of the Government of Gibraltar. This resulted in the UK and EU running online bingo operations out of Gibraltar and other EU countries, even if their services were UK specific, i.e. for the UK bingo market.

At the end of 2006 the US President signed into power the UIGEA or Unlawful Internet Gaming Act, this act meant that US banks were no longer allowed to process payments or any kind of financial transactions that were generated by internet gaming sites. This Act in effect brought many UK and EU bingo gaming sites to bankruptcy and caused a large amount of people to become unemployed virtually overnight. In retaliation there are many online bingo sites that will not accept payment from bingo players in the US.

The argument is that UIGEA is unconstitutional and a contravention of the WTO free trade rules, but it still remains in force, and many people are lobbying for UIGEA to be changed to perform somewhat like the UK’s Gaming Act of 2005, which is more of a regulatory Act than a total ban such as UIGEA.

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