Polish casino asks for online casinos to be legalised
Poland should legalise online gaming, according to one of the country's leading officials in the casino industry. Zbigniew Macioszek, a board member for one of Poland's largest group of land-based casinos, said the Polish government should legalise online casinos as the current set of regulations governing the Polish casino industry are outdated.
Speaking to journalists, Macioszek said the government of Poland should legalise online casinos to meet the demand for gaming in the country.
He said, "The need for gambling is as universal as is the need for other types of entertainment, and it [online casino gaming] is visible in every culture."
"[The current online casino law] was created almost twenty years ago from scratch with a lot of regulations copied from other countries," he added.
Macioszek's comments come after news that his casino is looking to expand their operation online. While the casino chain runs eight land-based casinos in the country, the organisation require the government to legalise online casinos before they can begin offering games like online slots and online blackjack over the internet.
Meanwhile, the Puls Bizensu, a Polish national newspaper, has revealed that the country spends just over $5 billion on land-based casinos annually; a forty per cent rise in the amount spent since 2007. Highlighting the gaming trends of the nation's players, the newspaper found that the most popular casino game was slots and that there were some 35,000 slot machines in the country, taking in just over $1 billion each year. The slots machine industry grew by twenty per cent over the 2007-2008 financial year.
Overall, the report predicted that by 2009, Poland's casino industry would be worth as much as the country's mobile telecommunications field, with players spending twice as much money on gaming as they did in 2008.