Right about now, Greece should be wishing they didn’t take monopolistic stance on gambling and an ill-fated ban on gaming machines that resulted in police raids on Internet cafes, confiscations and operator arrests just over five years ago. Raids and bans, confiscations, arrests and seizures, sounds like another country I know, and the result is always the same, it just doesn’t solve anything.
Today, Greece is looking at a massive national debt in the ballpark of around 300 billion Euro, and it’s growing by the day. No surprise then, that now they’re feeling the pressure for proper online gambling regulation. Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou, is now calling for a regulatory framework that works. One that is compatible with European regulation and one that effectively protects against illegal activity. Illegal activity has run wild through Greece, but this is what you can expect when proper regulation is not invoked, we’ve seen it happening all over the world.
Greece can at least take comfort in knowing that their country has a great potential to generate a significant profit for the government through regulated online gambling, with the value of their online gambling market being estimated at close to 2 billion Euro.
