So why is online gambling market a ‘grey’ market

It is no secret that land casino gambling is severely regulated even in those lands where it is legal. Leaving aside the disputes whether this regulation is a good thing or bad, we would like to dwell on the important and often asked question – Is it a similar story with online gambling or not?

Numerous facts show that no, it is not. With online casinos the players have much more freedom than with their brick-and-mortal fellow friends. Online gambling industry tends to be often unclear about legislation. Of course, it is a huge drawback from many points of view, there is no doubt about that. And truth be told, the author of this article still gets surprised from time to time with the matter-of-fact manner with which facts of ‘grey’ behaviour of some casinos are treated.

An online gambling war

A good example was the small war between bwin.party and GVC Holdings after the later got into bidding fight with one highly popular 888 casino. Our readers would probably know nothing about these parties, since Microgaming never did business with any of them. As the matter of fact, Microgaming is as far from the ‘grey’ part of the industry as only possible. But this story is still interesting because of its outcome, when even despite the fact bwin.party is 100% legal and GVC is almost positive to operate in grey jurisdiction, this fact did not influence outcome of the quarrel between them. Apparently, the fact that some operator is not fully legal is ‘ok’ in online gambling.

Winners from the banned lands

Our readers may see numerous press releases congratulating Someone from Some Country on his or her large jackpot win. A quick glance at these press releases is often enough to see that many of them mention players from jurisdictions that don’t even allow online gambling. Certainly, the author of this article tends to believe that all those jackpot winners played their online slots on vacation in other lands. Because if not so, it would really be weird for online casinos to post information uncovering such shady behaviour instead of hushing it.

So what is the bright side

But on the plus side, being not so damn strict about the rules and requirements of some governments that pass discriminating laws is a rather good thing. It is easy to understand the desire of those players who live in lands where online gambling is banned or severely regulated to feel the real rush of playing top online casino games. So let’s be honest and say that from this point of view, the suppleness of online casinos is just another from the row of many advantages they have over land casinos.

Jacob Morgan