Gibraltar eyeing US online gambling market

gibraltar-eyeing-us-online-gambling-marketGibraltar may be having issues with a UK proposal to slap online operators with a 15 percent point-of-consumption tax, but it’s also looking ahead into the future with eyes towards an online market that’s on the precipice of exploding sooner than later.

The country that houses around 60 percent of the world’s online gambling industry has eyes on scooping up a big piece of a US online gambling market that’s beginning to relax its ban on online gambling. Everyone agrees that the market in America, still largely untapped because of existing laws, is one of the last frontiers of online gambling. And when it finally opens itself up to online gambling, not a lot of countries can boast of having the aptitude for e-commerce than Gibraltar.

““Gibraltar is the largest jurisdiction in the world, the most successful jurisdiction in the world in the provision of online gaming, Chief Minister Fabian Picardo, the head of the territory’s government, said earlier this week, as quoted by Agence France-Presse.

“Online gaming is a burgeoning part of e-commerce and Gibraltar is at the forefront of that.”

Picardo isn’t waxing with hyperbole making those statements. It’s a well-known fact that 26 of the biggest online gambling operators in the world are registered in Gibraltar, including British heavyweights like Ladbrokes, Betfair, and 888 Holdings, a lot of whom chose the tiny British island in large part because of low tax rates, something that’s apparently now being thrown for a loop with the new proposal by the UK Gambling Commission to slap a 15 percent POC tax on off-shore companies based in places like Gibraltar.

The country hopes that when the online gambling market in the US opens up, a lot of operators will look at Gibraltar as a place that has upheld the highest standards of the business with no equivocation and prejudice towards anybody, including a ban on transactions from the US where online gambling, despite being on the verge of exploding, is still technically banned, at least in almost all of the states.

“We believe that Gibraltar’s in pole position to demonstrate to each of the states of the United States that we have been respectful of its laws and that this demonstrates how regulated the industry is in Gibraltar,” Picardo pointed out before adding that when the time comes that the US is ready to accept online gambling, Gibraltar is more than willing to welcome operators to do business in its shores.