Turkey blocks 110 unlicensed gambling sites
Country's telecommunications regulator TIB reveals extent of five-year online gambling clamp down
Turkey’s telecommunications regulator TIB yesterday revealed the extent of the nation’s attempted clamp down on unlicensed operators after revealing it blocked access to 110 unnamed domains over the course of the last five years.
The figure, which was revealed within TIB’s 2014 annual report, comes as the result of an initiative conducted in tandem with the Turkish National Lottery in order to reduce the size of the unlicensed market.
The report showed the Lottery requested the regulator block access to a total of 440 websites across the period, including 93 websites in 2009, 119 in 2010, 110 in 2011, 88 in 2012 and 30 last year.
And a quarter of these sites were blocked after TIB found them to be offering unlicensed online gambling services, enacting powers first handed down to the regulator in 2007.
Last year further legislation aimed at targeting players as well as operators and financial institutions was introduced to give greater protection the country’s domestic operators.
The country’s sole sports betting licensee, Spor Toto, last year sold a controlling stake in its online arm Bilyoner to Greek gaming operator Intralot for a sum of 10m, while earlier this month Net Holding was awarded a US$2.8bn contract to operate the country’s Milli Piyango national lottery.
Net Holding, a consortium comprising hotel, casino and lottery management firm Net Sans and US gaming supplier Scientific Games, fended off competition from other consortia comprising GTECH and Czech investment groups KKCG and Emma Delta, the latter having acquired the Greek government’s stake in OPAP last year.