Singapore’s Minister for Social and Family Development Tan Chuan-Jin has explained in a recent interview why Singapore has moved to allow two online gambling platforms to operate despite the country’s ban on online gaming.
Singapore’s Ministry of Home Affairs has exempted state-linked Singapore Pools and the Singapore Turf Club from the ban. The National Council of Churches Singapore then raised concern over the saying it sent “confusing and conflicting signals.”
Tan told Channel NewsAsia that the Government shares the concerns of anti-gambling and religious groups over problem gambling, but said that despite the ban, “You will not completely eradicate the problem.
“It is there and it is growing,” he said. “You can close down sites, but new sites will be set up, sometimes faster than you can close them down. It is a global market with a lot of money to be made, and the worst thing is that it is unregulated and there are no safety measures in place.”
Tan said “a tightly controlled outlet” allows the government to moderate any problems, and prevent it from growing.
The new licenses do carry restrictions. Gamblers on the legal platforms must be at least 21 years old, and will have to set daily gambling limits. They will also not be able to place bets on credit. An existing exclusion regime, which allows families to bar their loved ones from casinos, would also be in place for online betting.
Tan said the country looked to the examples of Hong Kong and Norway which also allow a small number of legal online betting operators
“What they’ve found is that it hasn’t exacerbated the situation at all,” he said.
Also, Singapore’s Senior Minister of State for Home Affairs Desmond Lee told the country’s Parliament last week that online betting accounts for about 90 percent in the of arrests for illegal football gambling on the island and more than one-third of those arrested for illegal lotteries.
Lee said statistics show that despite the gambling ban and blocking of financial transactions, illegal online gambling continues to grow in the country.
“At this rate, the remote gambling market will double in size roughly every 10 years,” he said. “Here in Singapore, we are not immune from these global trends, given our high Internet and smartphone penetration rates,” he said according to local media reports.
Lee also pointed to the limited gambling markets in Hong Kong and Norway that has allowed those jurisdictions to collect betting data that would have otherwise gone undetected and make adjustments to their online gambling policy.
