A recent report in the Guardian has stated that the government is asking gambling bookies to volunteer what would amount to millions of pounds in order to create a reinvestment plan that would bring grassroots sporting events to England. At this time the government is just creating a proposal and all participation in the event will be voluntary. As one can imagine, gambling industry has not been extremely excited about donating millions of pounds to be reinvested in other companies. This could be a huge whack to their annual revenue generated through their own gaming establishments.
According to a letter that was written to the gambling industry, as well as major sports governing bodies, they’re trying to repair the relationship between the government and the gambling community and feel that this would be a chance for the gambling bookmakers to show goodwill towards their community. Although the letter appears to have been very vague in its demands, it is implying that between £5m and £10m would be a substantial amount to contribute to this fund.
Currently the online gambling community is battling offshore betting that implementation of taxes, they’re taking down the business. The online gambling firms are not happy with the government in their attempts at shutting down offshore gambling, and increasing the taxes they continue to burden the online casinos. The fear of these online casinos is that they will be required to still pay taxes on their revenue such as the 1.8% tax being implemented in France to online operators. Therefore if they were to include attacks as well as the voluntary fund could be paying out double to the government, therefore crippling their overall annual revenue.
The remote gambling Association and Association of British bookmakers have spoken out against this plan and have decided that it is not well thought out, nor does it include all of the online and off-line sectors. All of the issues surrounding the gambling are time sensitive due to the general election is coming up in the next year.
