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by John on June 7, 2019

The problems that casinos are facing in 2019

Casinos have been a staple of the human civilization for hundreds of years. These venues have been providing entertainment to people with a penchant for risk for hundreds of years already and yet, in 2019, some problems and challenges are arising that might be causing the industry to have to change. The change that might need to occur is the result of the slowly changing attitude that the world has towards casinos, especially in areas where casinos are exceptionally popular.

Take a look at the Australian online casinos for example and the issues they are having with operating within the country, or the recent move by Norway to ban all casinos that are not from Norway. Things are changing at a high rate and this might be an interesting time and place to examine what the future of casinos and gambling, in general, might be in the near future and in the long term future of the world.

Australia doesn’t like gambling anymore

Australia has been famous around the world for a number of things, but gambling is one of the things that it has been becoming more and more famous for. To be more precise, the fact that Australians love gambling to a dangerous degree has been becoming the main narrative around the world, and this outlook has been affecting the way that Australians view themselves. It is not necessarily untrue that Australians love gambling – the majority of their population gambles at some point throughout the year, although this might not be as much a problem as some tend to believe. Although, the narrative has been affecting the way that a part of the population is acting towards the industry and towards the people who are playing within the industry.

There has been a rise in the number of people who are reacting adversely to the industry and are attempting to have the industry be changed from what it currently is to something more manageable. You can’t blame them for wanting to close down pokie bars, but the way they have been causing the industry trouble is also a bit worrying. This kind of attitude has already caused damage to the online gambling industry in Australia. The government ended up banning online casinos originating in Australia from providing services to Australians. This means that only foreign casinos are now able to provide said services. It also means that the industry is now causing money to drain from the economy, which is a strange way to go about “healing” your economy.

This might be an indication of the attitude of the world towards gambling in the near future. It seems that more and more English speaking and westernized countries are considering going about the subject the same way. Britain has been seeing an increase in the number of people gambling online and one thing they might consider changing this is by banning local online casinos altogether. We cannot be sure for now, but change seems to be coming eventually.

The Norwegian approach

While Austalia bans local online casinos, Norway is going about solving the problem very differently. The Norwegian watchdog recently decided to ban payments to and from six online casinos that were offering services within the country. The decision came about as a result of the watchdog declaring these casinos were breaking the law by offering services with the country, since only two companies are allowed to operate within the country, both of them Norwegian.

The ban has thus effectively barred from all international casinos providing gambling services within the country, only leaving two lottery companies with Norway able to operate. This seems to be the exact opposite of what Australia is doing, but it is also a problematic decision since it basically bans all forms of gambling from being possible within the country. The two remaining companies, both Norwegian, are simply lottery companies and nothing more. They do not offer table or slots games and thus do not satisfy the demand for an entire industry within a country. This means that an entire segment of the population is being ignored. And when you ignore someone or ban what they want, you are bound to get a black market for the product. So it might get a bit rocky in Norway if scams decide to start invading.

The golden mean

There is no point in banning a service that is highly demanding, but finding a balance between providing too much and not allowing at all needs to be figured out. It is important to allow people to enjoy themselves. Regulation of licensing is a good way to go about providing a legitimate service, but also providing notification of too much time spent gambling or otherwise providing people information on overindulgence might be better than simply banning a product outright.

By John

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