Australia Regulated And Licensed Online Casinos

Australia is a country with a large number of real life casinos. It is one of the most famous gaming tourism spots in the world. In fact, the Australian Gold Coast is the 4th most popular gambling vacation spot on the planet after Las Vegas, Macau and Monaco. Going to casinos and gambling on horse races, sporting events, etc is a very popular pastime activity among not only the tourists in Australia but also among the citizens of the country themselves. Tax revenue generated by regulating these casinos is one of the biggest sources of income for the Australian government. However, for all the popularity of real life casinos in the country, there are very few online casinos or gambling websites operating there. This is a curious phenomenon that is worth investigating.

The fact that there are very few online casinos and gambling websites in Australia is due to government regulations. Even though, these regulations are fairly relaxed towards actual casinos, they are very restrictive towards online casinos and online gaming. The Australian national parliament passed a bill in 2001 known as the Interactive Gambling Act. This bill aimed to regulate all forms of online gambling in Australia. The Interactive Gambling Act mandates that any company that runs an online gambling or casino operation in Australia must have its headquarters in the country. However, they cannot carry out their operations in any Australian state. These restrictions make the prospect of setting up any gambling websites or online casinos down under very unattractive to prospective businesses. They instead usually choose to set the business up in other countries while making their websites accessible to Australian customers.

The prospects of opening an online casino or gambling website down under would normally be very attractive since the Australian population enjoys gambling as a national pastime. However, the strict government regulations that discourage any business to do so must change before the online gaming industry in Australia can grow.