Norway is commonly regarded as the European country, where the gambling rules and regulations are tough and the gambling providers are few in number. As a matter of fact there are only two local gaming operators. The Minister of Culture has recently announced that the Norway gaming market has to be opened up and all the companies who would like to become providers should be able to freely operate within the country.
The Norway-based players are currently enabled to use two platforms to make bets – Norsk Riksoto and Norsk Tipping. Bearing the harsh gaming restrictions in mind, it is not surprising that the choice for games, accessible on the providers’ websites is not abundant. In brief, Norsk Riksoto is only visited by players, interested in horse racing while Tipping provides keno, lottery and sport betting but unfortunately, these options are not available to all the players.
Thorhild Widvey, the politician who is currently leading the Norwegian Ministry of Culture, and the Culture Committee have joined forces in finding the strategy that would bring benefits to the country’s economy. They also discussed all the advantages and disadvantages of opening the gambling market. It seems like the Minister is really interested in refining the gambling rules and regulations and making some changes that may eventually be talked over and accepted next year.
Norway authorities are planning to do some considerable research, concerning the actions of the United Kingdom, Denmark, Sweden and their approach towards the issues they faced up when they had opened their gambling markets.
It is worthy of mentioning that the Norwegian players will experience the effect of the changes in the gambling regulations most. For the time being, they are not allowed to use the funds, available in their bank accounts, in order to make payments towards online gambling platforms, they also have a limited number of games they can play and the worst of all is that when a Norwegian citizen stays at a casino resort in a foreign country, issues with the payment may occur because of the restrictions, mentioned above.
Although the details, concerning the online gambling legalisation are not completely figured out, the fact that they will be a subject to discussions is a major step forward.
Strange as it may sound, the Norwegian poker competitions usually take place abroad because the poker activities haven’t been legalized yet despite the considerable popularity of the poker games in the country.
According to the latest reports, every year Norwegians spend up to $180 million on gambling activities abroad. Once the Government legalize them, the players won’t be required to travel anywhere in order to make their bets, which will respectively result in increased income from taxes and boosted economy.
The Minister of Culture expressed her hopes that the gambling proposal will pass before the next Poker Championship in 2015. All the alterations in the laws will be imposed as soon as possible because it is obvious that the current situation is beneficial neither to the economy nor to the players.
