Casino News: Could Online Gaming in Singapore Be a World Beater?

Could prosperous times lie ahead for the Asia Pacific region, in the area of online gaming? According to PricewaterhouseCooper’s latest ‘Global Gaming Outlook’, the Pacific region looks set to be the fastest growing, certainly in terms of casino gaming revenue. Revenue is predicted to increase from US$34.3 billion, to a projected US$79.3 billion by 2015.

Despite these positive predictions, online casinos are still currently illegal in Singapore. An industry specialist claims that governments in the area should make the most of this outstanding opportunity, as opposed to resist it.

The PricewaterhouseCooper report noted that there was a feasible argument for the case, as players continued to find ways to access illegal online gambling. Could it be better to provide licenses and tax it as oppose to allow unlicensed operators to claim massive amounts of revenue? To get the go-ahead, the Singapore government needs to do serious research regarding the issues of online gambling, and to do this, it needs to be brought up in policy discussions.

On the contrary, other gaming experts have different views. One, Felix Ling, who is senior partner at Platform Asia Management Services, says that legalising online casinos in Singapore will have an adverse, and possibly even drastic, social impact.

Another, author of ‘Singapore Places its Bets’, Derek Da Cunha, is of the same opinion as Ling. He anticipates that if online gambling were to be legalised in Singapore, new players would be tempted to try it without really knowing what it was.

Is However, with the opening of two brick-and-mortar casinos in Singapore in 2011, both of which amassed incredible amounts of profit, could the tide be turning in Singapore?