Greece was hit particularly hard by the current economic crisis. High unemployment rates and drastic cuts in spending have led to rioting and protests. So, what\u2019s one of the monetary revenues the government has decided to turn to? Online gambling once considered a major problem to eradicate; now it\u2019s being viewed as a path to possible financial salvation.<\/p>\n
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Since 2002 Greece has been trying to crackdown on illegal gambling. A major factor in this was scandals surrounding the then Prime Minister Costas Simitis\u2019 high officials. Greek law states that any gambling undertaken outside the boundaries of licensed casinos was illegal. So, over the following couple of months, more than 750 arcade owners found themselves with prison sentences. This is because they\u2019d converted their slot machines to award money instead of extended play time. The blanket ban extended as far as even electronic games like Tetris. Despite serious doubts that this would have an impact, there was no escaping the fact that Greece was losing $5 million a day due to unlicensed gambling machines. The irony was, however, that the ban was a violation under EU laws and Greece has been dealing with fines amounting to approximately \u20ac11.5 million per year.<\/p>\n
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The situation before the arrival of the bill was as follows: the betting market of Greece is controlled by OPAP Monopoly, the largest betting firm within Europe. Until 2020 it has exclusivity on Greek lotto games and sports betting. Currently, \u20ac2 billion is being lost to illegal, online gaming and another \u20ac2 billion to unlicensed operators and bookmarkers for casino and poker games. Also, in spite of the heavy ban on gambling machines, it\u2019s thought that up to 20,000 have continued under the guise of Amusement with Prize (AWP) machines. There are thousands of machines currently operating in restaurants and bars throughout the country and this legalization will allow the government to benefit financially from these.<\/p>\n
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On Tuesday, 24th<\/sup> January, a draft law was released which stipulates that online gambling and low-stake gaming machines are no longer prohibited. This will not only open the gates to millions of extra Euros for the government, but also help combat unlicensed betting which illegalizing it was meant to accomplish before. The bill allows for the auction of between 15 and 50, five yearlong betting licenses, as well as 30,000 low-stake gaming machines with ten year licenses. Amusement gaming machines are allowed within licensed premises. The lowest winning payout for low-stake machines and online betting is to be 80 percent and the government aims to take six percent tax on both gambling revenues.<\/p>\n \n With so much money on offer, it appears as if Greece\u2019s venture to legalize gambling to such an extent may pay off. The government is now keen to tap into revenue which they\u2019d failed to get rid of completely through their ban. Although this won\u2019t fix the high unemployment rates or lead to instant stabilization of the economy, it can be seen as a financial step in the right direction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Greece was hit particularly hard by the current economic crisis. High unemployment rates and drastic cuts in spending have led to rioting and protests. So, what\u2019s one of the monetary revenues the government has decided to turn to? Online gambling once considered a major problem to eradicate; now it\u2019s being viewed as a path to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[9,35],"class_list":["post-144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-casino","tag-online-gambling","tag-tetris"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onlinecasinoedition.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onlinecasinoedition.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onlinecasinoedition.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onlinecasinoedition.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onlinecasinoedition.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.onlinecasinoedition.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onlinecasinoedition.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onlinecasinoedition.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onlinecasinoedition.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}