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The legislature in Ukraine has voted yes on a bill that will create a regulated online gambling market. This also creates a legalized land-based market as well in one sweeping measure that’s set to boost the country’s budget and bring regulation and safety mechanisms to what was previously an exclusively “underground” industry.
Ukraine Casino Regulation
There are still some countries in Europe, particular Eastern Europe, that have not brought together regulations for online gambling. However, Ukraine has removed their name from that list after a sweeping gambling bill for both online and land-based gambling passed their legislature.
This measure passed by a vote of 260 to 190, which is a pretty tremendous margin and is nowhere near being close.
This is great news for players in this country for a variety of reasons, but it’s good for Ukraine’s government as well since this measure is set to bring in quite a bit of revenue for their coffers. While all of the standard advantages of a regulated market apply here, there’s a bit more to the story considering other elements of the situation, particularly with Russian-annexed Crimea, which was the source of a big controversy a few years ago.
Widespread Support for the Bill
Something that’s really interesting about this whole thing is that there’s been pretty widespread support for the bill, which passed with a serious margin. One element of this is that President Vladimir Zelensky has previously called for such a bill to be put together to regulate the industry, to provide protections for players and to bring in revenues.
The majority of those in the legislature voted yes on this bill, and that’s no surprise considering it’s something the people there are generally in favor of as well. This isn’t something that was passed by a close margin within any element of the government, and that means it was clearly time for action to be taken.
Overall, the fact that this bill was passed with such a serious margin on its very first reading is clear proof that this is what was wanted in the country.
The Issue With Crimea
A really interesting part of this whole thing is that Crimea, which is currently annexed by Russia, has been given permission to open up a casino and resort within the next two years.
While there aren’t any details on exactly what they’re going to do with this, it’s pretty clear that this is big news considering what happened there just a few years ago.
Russia has agreed to the construction of the project, which has been in talks for half a decade or more. It’s an interesting consequence of this bill passing, and it’s an area to keep an eye on because of the far-reaching implications in the issues between Ukraine and Russia.
What Players Can Expect
There has been no clear word on what players can expect in terms of any particular rules or guidelines that the online operators will be using, how many licenses will be given out and so on. All of this will be released in the future, but for now, everything seems to be set up along the lines of the standard ideas that we typically see among emerging markets.
These ideas generally include things like having a set number of licenses that are given out, only going with companies with a tremendous reputation and taxes being decided on at a reasonable rate with some of the proceeds going to help those with problem gambling issues.
What we really think is great news here is that players will be able to enjoy themselves with government protections instead of having to worry about operating in the gray area of the law. That’s not a big deal in some places, but it was a big deal in Ukraine, and this legislation will go a long way toward making sure that the players are taken care of instead of being left out on their own.