Is Tanzania’s Sports Betting industry worth the cost?

Betting is a fast growing industry in Tanzania, as well as in many other East African countries. Government pays more and more attention to it in two aspects. The first one is that sports betting can be very profitable source of tax profits.

However, there is the other side of industry — its negative influence on youth and families. In this review we will try to find the exact answer to the question if Tanzania’s Sports Betting industry worth the cost or not. When writing, we used the information kindly provided by the experts of Parimatch online bookmaker. This Company successfully promotes legal sports betting in Tanzania.

What is a sport betting background in the country?

For many years betting in Tanzania was officially forbidden because of its two main negative features:

• Betting is undoubtedly addictive. It may cause psychological problems, and it makes especially strong influence on youth. Young men and women believe they can easily predict any spot or eSport outcome. As a result, they lose interest in other types of earnings, and also lose control over their own finances. Moreover, losses cause the need to recoup, which can lead to serious material problems.
• Betting is a fertile ground for match-fixing, blackmail, bribery, threats, and other criminal actions. Bookmaker’s activity is often closely connected with black market. There are lot of examples when ruthless underground bookmakers not only threatened the athletes, but also used physical violence against them and their families.

However, Tanzanian Government decided to legalize online sports betting in the country, and such a decision was made correctly. The first reason is that in spite of restrictions black market continued providing its services. World practice shows that it is much harder to deal with underground bookmakers and casinos than to legalize their activities. As a result, we have the following situation:

• When the industry was not legal Tanzania spent millions on unsuccessful struggle with underground business. Many athletes were afraid of underground bookies and had to fix matches or tournaments. Moreover, a lot of money left the country because «Black» bookies’ owners control their business from abroad.
• After legalization the State treasury gets 10 – 15 times more profit than the Government spends on betting industry regulation. The Gaming Board of Tanzania is a special government agency entrusted with oversight of sports betting, as well as casinos. This agency regulates both financial and psychological aspects.

For some years sports betting are being regulated by Tanzanian Government. The special attention is paid to online bookies which are the most wide spread in the country. The Gaming Board of Tanzania strictly controls these websites. Only such of them that provide betting software that responds to International Regulations have legal status in the country. Such monitoring helps to control both bookies the honesty of bookmakers in relation to their customers and in relation to the payment of taxes to the government treasury. Moreover, control is carried out both over servers located in Tanzania and abroad.

If to speak about addiction, Tanzanian regulative agency controls this aspect too. Its officials strictly follow how bookmakers comply with responsible gaming and betting policies. The sites of legal bookmakers should have contacts of organizations providing assistance to addicted players. At the same time, the bookmaker itself should not refuse to help its customers. One else important feature is participation in sports bets of minor users. On the sites of legal bookmakers there is always a warning about the prohibition of registration for minors. Moreover, the liability for the violation is quite serious.

Summing up, we note that practice has shown that for several years after the legalization of competitive rates in Tanzania, such a government decision justified itself. It has more positive than negative features for customers, bookies and authorities themselves.

Source: afriquemedia.tv

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