Russia has a new sports betting operator
Sports betting increases operations in the Russian market, with the approval of Zenit’s new platform.
Russia.- The online sports betting industry in Russia became bigger with the incorporation of Zenit as a new operator of the local iGaming platform. Zenit has also joined the Bookmakers Self-Regulatory Organization (SRO), one of two umbrella groups representing Russia’s licensed online bookies.
Russian sports betting market now offers 13 different platforms, including Liga Stavok, 1xBet, Winline, Betcity, 888, Fonbet, Olympus, Baltbet, Leon, BingoBoom, PariMatch and the most recent entrant Marathon. Bwin.ru, the Russian partnership of Digital Betting and GVC Holdings’ Bwin betting brand, is also almost ready to be launched in the following weeks.
Last week, the Ministry of Finance revealed on its website the guidelines for its budget and taxes for 2018-2020 and it disclosed that gaming taxes are set to double starting January 1, 2018. Further increases are expected until 2020. The Ministry said that gaming tax rates, which haven’t increased in 13 years, will increase 10 times by 2020 in order to increase revenue from official budgets. Land-based operators currently don’t pay any taxes on gaming revenue but they do pay flat fees for gaming tables or electronic gambling machines, whilst bookmakers pay a similar flat fee for each retail they have. The new regulations will be applied to both land-based and online gambling operators.
