Online Gambling in Asia

January 16, 2012 | News Category: Gaming Law

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Online gambling has become popular around the world, both in countries that have legal online gambling, and in countries that do not have regulated and legalized online gambling. In fact, there are a number of countries in which online gambling is illegal, and there are still people gambling online. This reality has caused certain areas to look into the situation of regulating online gambling in some form, even where a country does not wish to have legalized online gambling.

In the Asia Pacific region, online gambling is fast becoming popular, and is growing in leaps and bounds. There was a recent study that was carried out by PriceWaterhouseCooper. The PriceWaterhouseCooper Global Gaming Outlook report investigated the Asia Pacific region with regards to online gambling and came up with some interesting results.

The report shows some major growth in the area on a number of different levels. It is expected that over the next five years, the online gambling industry in the Asia Pacific area will grow from an industry that is worth $34.4 billion to an industry that is worth $79.3 billion by the time we reach the year 2015.

Because of these number released in the report, there has been a new call to make a move with legalizing and regulating online gambling in a number of countries in the area.

Jonathan Galaviz, a gaming analyst had the following to say: "There is a strong argument that, since consumers will engage in illegal online gaming anyway, it is better to license and tax it than to allow the revenues to go to unlicensed operators."

He further noted that there has been a large amount of growth in online gambling with the most growth in online poker. Galaviz explained that there has been growth in all countries with no regard to the legality of online gambling. He cites Singapore as an example, where online gambling is against the law, but has grown by 49.7% in 2010.

Galaviz said: "It's probably an appropriate time for governments to, at the minimum, seriously research the issue and get up to speed on the topic for thoughtful policy discussions."

Not all believe that it is a good idea to regulate online gambling no matter what happens. One such opinion comes from Mr. Felix Ling. Mr. Felix Ling, a senior partner and the casino consultant at Platform Asia Management Services, has said: "Legalizing online gambling will likely cause a significant social impact. Once you allow online gambling, you are indirectly encouraging more people to flock there."