News - Foreign online casinos, bookmakers must be licensed in Armenia under local companies’ terms

Foreign online casinos and bookmakers that accept bets from Armenia must be licensed under the same conditions as local companies. Gevorg Papoyan, co-author of the bill on amendments to the Law on Gambling, Internet Totalizers and Casinos and an MP of the ruling Civil Contract Faction, announced this at the session of the National Assembly Tuesday, during the second and final reading of this bill. According to the bill, people in Armenia who bet in online casinos must open special accounts. These accounts can be filled independently. Thus, according to the authors of this legislative initiative, if before the circle of gambling lovers in Armenia remained unclear until the end, now the situation will radically change. "It will be possible to find out whether the disadvantaged sections of the population [of Armenia], who, for example, receive family benefits, make bets," said Papoyan. The same applies to Armenia’s security forces, as well as some other groups of persons. The Armenian authorities want to introduce targeted restrictions in this way. Gambling companies are not against these changes, the Armenian authorities assure. But even so, they demand to maintain a level playing field. In 2022, the amount of bets made in Armenia increased 1.5 times—from 3.9 to 5.8 trillion drams ($12.5 billion). And in the first half of 2023, the growth of the number of bets made in Armenia increased noticeably—by 0.4 percent. But the Armenian government believes that these bets could have gone to foreign websites.