News
by John on June 6, 2019

Kindred pulling out of UK hostile market

Kindred is one of the largest online gaming service providers in the world and has been operating in the United Kingdom for a while now. And so far, throughout these years, Kindred has managed to have a fairly healthy business. But the year 2019 is turning out to be a lot harder for kindred than they anticipated. And all of this hardship is turning out to be too much for the company. As a result, this Malta-based giant that has been listed in Stockholm will be closing its operations in the UK or at least one of them and moving out of the country.

Maria Casino has been a staple for many of the fans of online gambling in the UK for the past few years. Many have enjoyed everything that the casino has had to offer up to now, but as some of the newest Norwegian online casino sites are reporting, Kindred will be packing their bags and leaving their Maria casino for good.

This comes as a result of the UK market slowly, but surely, becoming more and more hostile to the gambling industry and specifically to Kindred over the past few years. The UK has spent the past few years introducing new legislation, which after going into effect, will be having a very negative impact on the operations of casino providers within the country, which is why many are speculating Kindred is leaving the market for good. But while speculation might not be wrong, Kindred is not making any official statement specifying why it leaving the country. They are instead limiting their official statement and saying that the closing of the Maria casino is simply a result of their decision to refocus their attention elsewhere.

Where this elsewhere is many were not sure up til now, yet Kindred seemed confident in their decision to abandon the current state of the UK as it is and move on to better things. In a recent statement, they revealed that they will be refocusing most of their attention on their operations with 32Red and Unibet entities.

While the closing of Maria Casino comes as a shock to many users, the good news was that the casino gave more than enough time to their users to withdraw their funds. They kept the services open until May 14th, when most of the users got to request withdrawals in time and get their funds out before the casino closed all of its operations for good.

What seems even more interesting is the fact that this decision comes in tandem with the Norwegian gaming authorities deciding to ban Kindred from offering their services within the country. According to the authority, this decision was made because Kindred violated the law in offering their services within Norway, as they did not have a license to operate within the country up until to the very point they were banned from providing or receiving funds.

This international trouble that the company has been facing for the past few months might be a little suspicious and hard on the company, but it should be doing fine. The company concentrates its efforts on promoting two of its other projects, it is likely to find more success over time.

The games on the website seized functioning on the 7th of May, but as we mentioned, the withdrawal function kept up until the 14th. The UK market might be getting a bit smaller for Kindred, but they are still going to remain within it with their 32Red and Unibet projects. The year has also seen the Financial Report of the company operating in Sweden become a subject of close scrutiny, as the reported has to remain unaudited while the company reported the highest user base in years, while the profits were being significantly impacted.

This is not surprising as the local Swedish market just saw the introduction of some new regulation, which required some of the companies operating to stop. Kindred was able to acquire a license, which provided them with a huge influx of new users, but the profits did not grow by much as the new people were only just trying out the casinos before fully committing to it.

By John

More content by John

Comments (0 comment(s))