The UK Gambling Act is to blame according to reports released in the last couple of weeks. The NCiF calls for a well regulated and socially responsible land casino industry in the UK and they have assigned independent business firm such as Ernst and Young to study and report on this situation, and to propose any recommendations they may have. They evaluated the situation with land casinos and hold the Gambling Act of 2005 responsible for restraining the industry. This may come as no surprise to many industry insiders, however; many are saying that this report is flawed.
The Gambling Act has limited the number to remaining online casinos to create new products according to the Telegraph newspaper with the fixed staked rules and rations for gambling games. The tax rates have sky rocketed with an increase of 500% this makes for an even bigger issue. With taxes that high, you can bet operators and industry executives are not happy about what is going on in the industry.
The conclusion of the report recommends that several different measures be taken that could turn the land based casinos in the UK around and generate more revenue annually around £45 million. The gambling machines that are legal outside the casinos should be allowed back into the land casinos as a five to one machine for the table ratios could be applied to all land casinos. This is about what was expected even before the report was released, so there are many things in the release that wasn’t such a surprise to readers.
The limits for the permitted areas should also be done away with to enable more latent or underachieving casinos to try and come up with more practical locations that want a casino.
Telegraph also stated that the president of NCif, Michael Silberling made a statement that claims it is time to take some of these words and put them into action. He thinks the United Kingdom would be welcoming of the new jobs. The estimation of the new jobs would be around 5,000 with a tax collection close to £100 million.
Last but not least the report also claimed that the land casino industry is one of the more regulated forms of gaming in the UK and has a disadvantage against the online gambling market. This leads some to think that UK land casino gaming will take over the online market in the near future, however; that doesn’t seem likely. With more and more casinos opening up to the UK market, it’s possible that online gaming will soar more than ever before.
