When PricewaterhouseCoopers released its much-vaunted global gaming industry report back in December we speculated as to whether PwC in fact stood for PricewaterhouseCalvin thanks to their projections being very much in line with ours. One part that we didn’t shed enough light on were the projections on growth in one of Asia’s largest land-based casino locations.
Singapore is expected to overtake Las Vegas in amassing more casino business revenue on an annual basis in the near furutre. That’s not even close to the tip of the iceberg though. Gambling in Singapore will only start to see the tip of the peak when the online gaming industry starts to make legitimate inroads into the country.
Jonathan Galaviz, a gaming analyst, told Casinos.com governments in the region to seize the opportunity and take advantage of the huge growth that would come from legitimizing online gambling. The report states the pros far outweigh the cons when it comes to licensing and taxing online gaming. Think of it this way: instead of consumers having to gamble with unlicensed sites and all the money going elsewhere, the governments involved would be ensuring the safety of citizens as well as taking money for doing so. If that’s not a win-win what is?
Galaviz went on to recommend the Singapore government do some “serious research” regarding online casinos being legalized and bring in policy discussions before they miss the boat. There is some opposition from various other analysts arguing the “social consequence” of allowing online gambling will simply be too much to bear. A player apparently not knowing what online gambling is, according to Derek da Cunha, another worry and the fact that people will use their computers only for gambling purposes, not for work.
PwC’s report identifies that Asia gaming revenue will hit $79.3billion by 2015 and that includes online gaming. If Singapore thinks it’s rolling in the dough with the casinos then they could well be engulfed by a vat of cash (in a good way!) were they to give online gambling their ear and eventually introduce legislation taxing and regulating the industry.
