Crack Down Announced On Gambling Website Advertising
While the UK government recently announced plans to change the basis upon which Gambling sites could advertise on UK TV, they are set to announce further details over the next few weeks with the production of an authorised list. The authorised list is the authorities way of forcing gambling websites to register in the UK to be able to hit the UK market, but what are the conditions to be part of the list?
Effectively the list boils down to where the website is based, with areas such as Costa Rica, Belize and Netherlands Antilles set to be banned from advertising in the UK. As part of the European Union, the UK authorities are not allowed to ban advertising from fellow EU member states, although they have shown a desire not to co-operate with areas with reduced customer protection laws.
In a rather strange twist, the UK government had as early as last year stated their hopes to become one of the main centres for website domains, allowing companies to register as UK based in exchange for paying taxes to the UK authorities. While this idea has not been repeated for a while, the government are in effect forcing websites to register in Europe (or better still the UK) to gain direct access to the UK markets.
The tax drop from online companies is potentially enormous and any government which can present themselves as a cost effective base for such companies stands to receive billions of pounds in payments. By tempting companies to register in the UK in exchange for direct access to UK markets the government are effectively trying to gain an advantage on other authorities around the world.
Whether these tactics will deliver an end result remains to be seen, but the government can but try!