Calls to Police Canadian Online Gambling Industry
As more and more Canadians become involved in online gambling, industry experts are calling for the government to become more involved in a bid to keep players protected and bring down addiction rates.
Operators and experts met in Calgary to attend the Canadian Gaming Summit and concluded that more than $1 billion is spent by Canadians each year on this pastime because of the convenience, the entertainment and ease.
"For that same reason people love to surf the internet, the love to game online," said William Rutsey who serves at the president of the Canadian Gaming Association. "It's become a major form of leisure time."
However, with the growing number of Canadian players comes the growing concern that they may not be properly protected from shady sites.
As such, there have been calls for provincial governments to go ahead with their plans to introduce legal and regulated online gambling sites in a bid to keep players better protected.
The President of the Interactive Gaming Council, John Fitzgerald, said that it is easy to police online gambling thanks to existing technology. Regulating the industry could, argues Fitzgerald, test the standards of software to ensure that they meet the highest industry standards.
Technology makes it easy to check that players are enjoying fair, random gaming, as well as that their money is protected.
The secret of getting gamblers to play at regulated sites is variety, said Fitzgerald. He believes that if more regulated options were available to players, they would stick to reliable sites instead of risking being caught up in a scam.
He also pointed out that there were many offshore sites that were well regulated, including casinos that run off the Microgaming network and poker rooms such as Poker Stars and Full Tilt Poker.
