Estonia sees online gambling growth
Posted by Carl Barnett on 19 Feb 2010 at 11:02
Estonia, which this year legalised online gambling, is already seeing signs of considerable growth in the sector.
The government unveiled a two stage plan in January that would pave the way for full legalisation.
Phase one allowed players in the country to place bets with online gambling providers that had servers based inside Estonia land limits, thus opening up the internal Estonian gambling market when it came to online transactions.
Phase two of the project is expected to see results in 2011.
This phase will allow foreign operators to seek customers within Estonia, instantly creating competition for Estonian companies, who will have the one year gap to build up business.
The first fully legalised Estonian casino was launched a few days ago, opening up for business on January 21st.
This was after some quite rigorous testing and scrutiny by the Estonian government, who took great pains to ensure that the site fitted in with their outlook as regards online gambling.
The site offers over 150 games for the players to enjoy, including the first ever online poker games in Estonia.
Estonian players, meanwhile, continue to frequent foreign sites.
