Over 60 countries around the world license online casinos, the US is the worst country for gamblers, and 56 percent of the world’s population faces some form of online gambling ban, but ordinary players are not penalised in most cases. These are the main findings of a research project into online gambling access, by affiliate KeyToCasino.
Looking at sources in 46 languages from 225 countries, KeyToCasino researched online and land-based casino access and then gave each country a Gambling Availability Score. A key part of this score was the policy of online casinos. For example, 14 percent of casinos restrict access to players even though they live in countries where there are no online gambling restrictions.
The scores were out of 1,000 with 500 points based on online casino accessibility. For the remaining 500 points, casino laws, penalties, access and financial blocks were taken into consideration. The United States got the worst Gambling Availability Score with 311 points followed by Iran with 407 points and France with 412 points. In the United States, where online gambling is banned on a federal level, gamblers cannot access 72 percent of the world’s online casinos. Other countries’ scores and ranks are available here.
Fifty-six percent of the world’s population face some form of online casino ban. In 39 countries online casinos are banned completely, and in 32 countries, local operators are banned, but foreign online casinos operate. A further 61 countries allow casinos to operate under licence. Half of these countries only have the ability to enforce the licence on local casino operators though. The remaining 93 countries of the world do not explicitly ban online casinos or license them.
