Last Best Hope For South Africa Online Casinos?
Most likely you have seen or heard the news about the recent actions or to be more accurate the lack of action from the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI). As you probably know, this time around quite a number of online casino players were hoping this was to be the year that South Africa joined the ranks of other countries such as the U.K. with legalized and well regulated online gambling sites.
Not so much. At least if the DTI has their say in the matter. Here’s the short version of what recently transpired. The infamous DTI issued yet another policy paper regarding its final version of South Africa’s National Gambling Policy for 2016. In no uncertain terms the DTI revealed their intentions. As a matter of fact, language in the DTI’s policy paper was rather poignant, stating that: “…no new forms of gambling will be allowed at this point…”. Obviously this is quite a blow to those proponents of legalized online casino action in South Africa that were looking for a more proactive online gambling site position this time around.
Interestingly, the DTI’s justification for the opposition to the legalization of online casino action is based on a rather unusual position. According to the DTI, the objections to legalized online gambling sites are based on its contention that online gambling sites are not by their nature “labor intensive” and thus if in fact legalized would not “produce significant jobs compared to other regulated activities like casinos. The government also believes its important to protect gambling activities tat create jobs from unwanted competition.”
Of course you can clearly see that this position is clearly putting land based casinos in a more favorable position than they perhaps deserve. As you probably know, the existing South African law is set up so that only online sports betting is actually legal whereas online casino action is legally prohibited.
Not that the prohibitions actually serve the intended purpose of steering South Africans to land based casinos. Not at all. Although exact numbers are by definition rather difficult to obtain, the fact of the matter is that online casino action is in fact wildly popular. Significant numbers of South Africans are known to regularly frequent their favorite online casino sites.
As you can plainly see, the DTI has done it again. The DTI has just slammed down the hammer on the expansion of legal online casino gambling sites. Not that will in any way serve to quench the demand for online casino action from South Africans who quite clearly prefer the option of hanging out at their favorite online gambling site.