Modernizing Gambling Laws
The extreme growth and prevalence of the international online casino gambling industry has caught the notice of an increasing number of governments that are now actively looking for ways to modernize internet gambling laws and enter the 21st Century with their legislation and regulations. Northern Ireland’s government has taken a leap that many others still haven’t accepted, that gambling laws that are decades old don’t apply to the current market place where the internet is a global medium that has expanded beyond even the scope of what regulators could have imagined 20 years ago. For that reason the online casinos in Northern Ireland are getting a facelift of sorts as the government actively works to modify and modernize the current gambling laws.
The Northern Irish online casino gambling market could actually begin to resemble some of the gambling laws that were put in place in the UK several years ago with the UK Gambling Act, although not that liberal most likely. Right now there is a push for the government to give concessions for the bingo halls – both internet bingo sites and the land bingo halls. Margaret Ritchie, the Minister of Social Development, supports the modernization of these gambling laws and notes that the current legislation is just too “hard to understand” and the land and online casinos are likely confused as to the limits of their industry because of the old language used. Old laws simply cannot account for all of the new opportunities and products available in the online marketplace.
The government in Northern Ireland feels that modernizing the gambling laws to deal with the real issues and concerns of the current land and online casino gambling industry will benefit all of the citizens of Northern Ireland as well as the internet bingo and gambling companies operating in an unclear market.