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An Overview of UK Online Gambling Laws

British people stereotypically tend to be betting men and women - you often hear British bookies' odds reported on the most peculiar markets, just to give one example, the first word of the new royal baby. So how harsh can the online gambling laws in a country like that be?
author-picture Admin - 2017. June 03.

British people stereotypically tend to be betting men and women - you often hear British bookies' odds reported on for the most peculiar markets, just to give one example, the first word of the new royal baby. So how harsh can the online gambling laws in a country like that be?

United Kingdom residents have a lot easier time when they are looking for some gambling action than for example their fellow US  gamblers - they are only legally alowed to wager money online in three states New Jersey, Nevada and Delaware.

In the UK you are free to put some money on a game or some cards no matter if you're from Wales, England, Scotland or Northern Ireland. Online betting regulations fall under the Gambling Commission which answers to the government’s Department for Culture, Media, and Sport. You may have heard about this institution in the news while the PKR bankruptcy case was going down - the MGN room's entire player pool was anxiously wating for their interpretation of the law whether or not player funds were protected or they could be sued to pay off creditors. Their decision ultimately did not matter as PokerStars decided to bail out the players.

So the UK Gambling Commission is the one giving out licenses for poker rooms and betting sites and UK is not one of those countries in Europe that fight to keep a state monopoly on gambling, they allow foreign based sites to operate as well as domestic ones. This allows for a thriving and competitive UK onlien gambling industry where you may need some guidance. A whole other industry is built around that, aggregator sites like nektancasinos.co.uk also have huge traffic, not just the online casinos themselves.

To give you an idea that how big the online gambling industry is in the UK here are some numbers from the aforementioned UK Gambling Commission's 2016 annual report: in the period April 2015 - March 2016, the gross gambling yield (GGY) from remote gambling was £4.468 billion out of a total of £13.6 billion (up from £11.3 billion in the preceding twelve months), making online gambling for the first time the dominant revenue generating sector.

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