CIS 2020 in review: Kazakhstan
4H Agency partners Ilya Machavariani and Ivan Kurochkin look back at regulatory developments in Kazakhstan over the last 12 months and assess the coming year for the central Asian hotspot
- what has been changed in the Kazakhstan gambling regulation in 2020;
- what to expect in 2021?
- our assessment of the anticipated changes.
Changes that were enacted in 2020
- due to the increase in the number of illegal offshore gambling operators in Kazakhstan, a new infrastructure for website blocking of the illegal offshore gambling operators was introduced into the regulations;
- government authorities limited the types of events where betting operators can accept bets only to the sports events (until July 2020 it was allowed to accept bets on various types of events (i.e., elections);
- provisions outlining certain aspects of responsible gambling, which had been introduced to the gambling law earlier, were expanded.
What to expect in 2021?
- betting and totalisator operators will now only be allowed to locate gambling premises only in the specifically designated gambling zones (as of now it’s not mandatory to locate such gambling premises in the gambling zones). To add to that, such gambling zones initially were created to host land-based casinos and slot machine halls.
- in order to ensure new mechanisms of control over the online betting and tote operators, a new “centre for bets accounting” would be created. It is stated that such centre would encompass all information in respect to all of the bets made in the jurisdiction.