server requirements and the draft law is currently on its second approval procedure.
the online aRRival Estonia’s plan to launch online gaming came on the back of the first Baltic PokerStar Festival in 2009 which was sponsored by
PokerStars.com, one of the world’s largest online gambling site.
In January 2010 Estonia’s online gaming industry was officially legalised but at this time the legislation only applied to local online gaming providers which at the time was the Playtech Group in collaboration with the Olympic Casino group, which is the government owned monopoly provider of gambling in the country.
At the time the law enabled the operation of
Olympic-online.com, which is a Playtech run internet casino. Later that year the company also introduced its i-phone compatible mobile gaming service with about 20 games.
The idea behind this, says the Estonian government, was to protect players from any negative side effects of online gaming such as fraud and underage gambling. Local internet providers Starman and Elion were advised to block any online gambling platforms that were not hosted locally. Likewise if any user tried to visit a foreign website they were automatically directed to the Estonian Tax and Customs
department. If the internet providers did not carry out such tasks they were liable to face fines of up to 40,000 krones.
At this time the only operator was the OEG group and in March 2010 a list comprising of some 175 domain names were blocked including some of the big names in online gaming such as PartyPoker, Bwin and Pokerstars to name a few. The list which was sent to the service providers even included
in janauRy 2010
estonia’s online GaminG industRy was officially leGalised, But
only foR local online GaminG pRovideRs.
names of companies which had previously invested in Estonia such as Unibet, NordicBet and TrioBet.
In March 2010, Unibet dropped its plans to relocate to Estonia from Malta when the Maltese authorities offered it better terms
despite its plans to move its servers and 170 jobs to Estonia at one time. The small size of the Estonian market also hindered the move
Then in May 2010 the Estonian Tax and Customs Board granted a further licence for legal online gambling giving Triogames OU two operating licences granting permission for the Triobet brand name on both casino games and lottery games. Triobet is owned by the Nordic Gaming Group (NGG)
Meanwhile during this time the board had some 300 sites which were blacklisted which Estonians were denied access to.
The Tax and Customs Board however has no limitation on the number of remote licences issued. It is estimated there are around 50,000 Estonians who play poker online.
In 2011 the government began to grant foreign online gaming providers with ‘limited access’. Initially they had to apply for official licences, pay tax and then transfer their software (in Estonian) to locally hosted servers. This was not something the foreign providers welcomed.
Before foreign hosted companies can offer internet gaming in Estonia however they must also obtain a licence and meet certain technical requirements including a fee of EKK1.3m (€83,000).
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estonia
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