After last year’s harsh laws on online and land-based gambling, Russia is going at it again with tightening rules on online payments. This will of course make life even harder for the remaining bookmakers in the country. If you remember, back in 2014 there were some threats to ban just about anything the western world has to offer. Then by December the following year over 50 online gambling destinations were blocked, including sites belonging to giants like PokerStars, William Hill and Ladbrokes. Ladbrokes and Betfair officially announced their withdrawals from the Russian market as a result. To top that there is the ongoing Bitcoin story.
To put things simply, they are trying to put some order in online payment methods and providers. A new centralised online betting payments hub was introduced to achieve that. It’s called TSUPIS and is handled by the QIWI Group, which operates over 175k electronic payment terminals across Russia.
The new system was supposed to kick in last month but was postponed indefinitely as operators line up behind rival self-regulatory organizations (aka SRO). A number of bookies, including well-known names like Fonbet, Atlantik-M, Bingo Boom and Johnny Game, recently quit the group known as the First SRO and joined different ones with experts in the field pointing at the reason for that being a concern that members of the First SRO will be required to pay higher commissions for TSUPIS. The information was publically denied by the head of First SRO Oleg Zhuravsky. He insisted that all bookmakers will be treated fairly and charged the same rate.
Rumours have been spreading that the government is going to increase taxes on gambling more than ten times in the not too distant future. Even though the information has not been confirmed by officials, what has been made officially available is that casino operators and bookmakers will be required to submit annual and interim financial statements to the Ministry of Finance and the Federal Tax Service. So it doesn’t really look good, does it now.
As if all that wasn’t enough, operators from abroad have voiced suspicions that the Russian bookies have planned an operation to prevent them from accessing TSUPIS in the first two years of it being put in place (ahem, if and when that ever happens) in order to allow the domestic market time to adjust to the new reality without before being swiped under the more experienced foreign competitors.
Another brilliant rule introduced for bookmakers was the addition to the Physical Culture and Sports law, whereby all bookies have to now contribute 5% of their betting revenue back to Russian sports federations. Each sporting federation has to be paid a minimum of RUB 3m ($44k) per quarter with the total minimum for all federations exceeding RUB 15m. That means each operator has to put in yearly at least RUB 60m (US $888k). One has to wonder what on earth are they going to do with all that cash since they are banned from the Olympics…but you know, Russia.
Well that’s all for now, I know, I know, I promised you an article on online mobile casinos but bear with me, I just couldn’t help writing this. I will get you that one soon enough, stay tuned.