Nigeria should not follow in the footsteps of Kenya and Uganda with sports betting

Both Kenya and Uganda have taken very strict stances against sports betting in the country. Both of the governments have mentioned how terrible of an effect an under-regulated gambling industry has on the local youth, however, this doesn’t mean that they’ve managed to get rid of the problem completely.

We need to look at the developments with hindsight. Is the ban on sports betting going to help the young people who are already addicted or the ones that have started to “get a hang” of gambling? No, absolutely not, in fact, it’s going to introduce an even worse type of gambling, Illegal gambling.

What were the issues in these countries?

As already mentioned, the young Kenyans and Ugandans had an issue with gambling too much on sports betting websites. They’d place weekly wages on a single game and lose it all within just a few hours. This was becoming a massive problem, but in order to somehow regulate it, a complete ban was definitely not an option.

The issue is the way the government looks at the demand for gambling. It’s not like getting rid of several websites or licensed offline casinos would diminish the demand right? The same issues happened in the United States during the prohibition. Licensed and honest companies that paid taxes on the goods and services they’d sell, were quickly engulfed by new laws that prevented them to operate.

Every honest business owner simply closed shop and found a new industry to start working in, but that doesn’t mean that the demand wasn’t there anymore. The same goes for gambling companies. If licensed and controlled entities close down, there will be absolute chaos in these countries due to illegal gambling outbreaks, in fact, they’re already there.

Students gambling on campus

The gambling activities outside of the government regulated companies were also quite prevalent before the ban. Students would approach several illegal bookies on campus, give them some money in cash and say what they’re betting on. They didn’t have to go through some check-ups on the website and inside the casinos, while the illegal bookies didn’t have to pay taxes. All in all, it was a lose-lose situation for both the population and the government (…)

Read more: nigerianeye.com

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