France to license online casinos starting in 2010

Let me first start out by saying that it’s a sad day when France realizes what’s going on, and works to resolve the situation instead of banning online gambling, such as Steven Beshear was/is trying to do. Steven Beshear needs to take a few lessons from Eric Woerth, France’s budget minister, which was quoted as saying “Rather than banning 25,000 Web sites, we’d rather give licenses to those who will respect public and social order.”

This, in fact, is what America should do, and should have done back in 2006. But instead, lawmakers passed the UIGEA (Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act) which places regulations on now-taxed payment processors and banks to ban transactions that have anything to do with online gambling. The USA has lost billions of dollars of revenue that they could have recieved from online gambling, but instead they decided to try to ban it. Where’s the logic in that?

But anyways, I digress. Let’s get back to France.

France already takes in over €5 billion every year from Internet gambling, offline casinos, and horse racing. Next year, those numbers will definitely increase, because as it is now, they don’t allow any competition from casinos located in other countries. Their plan is to open up competition, and will license and tax online casinos from other countries; at a rate of 7.5% on sports events and horse wagers and 2% on poker wagers.

Now, let’s get the USA to follow suit…I never thought France would be ahead of us in many things, but they sure are.

Author: GamesAndCasino