Expected overhaul of UK gambling laws

Online gambling is legal in the UK as part of a wider legal framework that regulates all gambling in the UK. Residents in England, Scotland and Wales have access to betting shops in every city and town and many casinos and gambling halls located in big cities.

With gambling being so widespread in the UK it was obvious that online gambling will play an important role in the lives of UK punters. The big UK bookmaker such as William Hill and Ladbrokes started to offer their services online and for many years their operation and the gambling operation of many offshore gambling companies operated undisturbed within the UK.

Now the UK’s culture secretary Jeremy Hunt wants to introduce radical changes to overhaul the UK’s online gambling licensing laws in order to offer better protection to UK punters.

The reason for Hunt’s recent campaign to promote an online gambling licensing reform is recent events that brought down Full Tilt Poker (FTP), the world’s second biggest online poker room, after the events of Black Friday that caused domain seizures and federal indictments brought against its founders on charges of money laundering and illegal gambling.

FTP was not the only online poker room to suffer in the events of Black Friday, but it’s the only poker room that was unable to return funds to US players. In addition at the end of June FTP also lost their gambling license and since all European players are unable to access their accounts or recover their funds, including tens of thousands UK poker players.

Hunt’s wants to prevent such a thing happening again and regulate the licensing procedure for overseas operators in order to ensure UK players are offered financial protection under new licensing laws.

The changes in regulation are not expected in the next year as it will take time to review the market in order to come up with a legal framework that is workable on part of the UK government and acceptable on gambling operators.