Russian search engine penalised for online poker ads
Yandex judged to have presented links to sites offering real money poker including PokerStars and Full Tilt
Russia’s Federal Antitrust Service (FAS) has reprimanded the country’s leading search engine Yandex after the company was judged to have fallen foul of the country’s advertising laws by publishing links to poker websites including Full Tilt and PokerStars.
The company has been accused of running advertisements for well-known online poker brands, despite authorities having placed restrictions on the promotion of real-money poker in Russia.
FAS has warned Yandex that it must halt the advertising of poker sites offering real-money games while the company is also expected to be hit with a financial penalty in the coming weeks.
“Despite the need to restrict access to gambling on the internet and advertising, the legislation in force, the search engine Yandex in June this year on the territory of the Russian Federation extended advertising of gambling (poker),” a FAS statement read.
However, Yandex told eGaming Review that the links provided were for free-to-play versions of the game and was unaware customers could gain access to real-money varieties.
“The FAS’s ruling concerned three advertisements that promoted a free game of poker, which is not illegal according to the Russian law,” a spokesperson for Yandex said.
“That a paid game was offered to web users after downloading standalone desktop or mobile apps from one of the websites we learnt from a complaint filed by one of our customers. The advertised websites as they were, however, were still in compliance with the law.”
“We stopped the ads as soon as the situation became clear,” the spokesperson added.
In recent months the Russian government has begun to crack down on online gambling and has compiled a “blacklist” of online operators who have continued to target its residents.
However, this could be set to change with a trio of government ministries last month tasked with looking into the possibility of reregulating the activity in a move which could generate around RUB5bn (£83m) a year in taxes.
In other news:
– Online poker network health check
– Social networks claimed as “number one” egaming marketing channel