Culture Secretary calls for standards in online gambling

According to the Independent Study for Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), approximately one million people in Britain regularly gamble online. This statistic represents almost one third of the entire European population and of this estimate, women represent a growing percentage of the gambling population estimating up to 30% of hits to UK gambling sites during the World Cup matches alone.

Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell seems to be picking up on this trend. She recently entered the fray by calling the UK the hallmark for standards for online gambling and saying that she hoped more companies considered the move to that nation to set up shop. Although she did concede there would be some benefits to the governments regulating online gambling games, Jowell insisted the fundamental driver behind the new government push was protection of the public from unscrupulous behavior from offshore online gambling casinos.

Under the proposed government regulations, online gambling websites would not be allowed to target children with their advertising and customers would need to be informed on a constant basis about how much money they had spent on any of the games including online poker and online slots.

Other government ministers have conceded that the project is both ambitious and complicated but the government has presented a united front that regulating online gambling in this way will be well worth it and in the best interest of the public in the end.