Russian bookmakers weigh in on SRO abolition

Bookmakers have criticised the government’s initiative to abolish self-regulatory organisations.

Russia.- The Russian government is getting ready to abolish self-regulatory organisations (SROs), which represent licensed operators’ interests in the country and sparked operators’ objections on the issue. Authorities consider SROs to be duplicating the Federal Tax Service’s (FTS) functions but bookmakers are concerned about what they consider to be “a strange initiative.”

Russian bookmaker Liga Stavok’s president Yuri Krasovsky is also head of the First SRO and questioned the potential abolition and the reasons behind it, which “didn’t seem real and objective” to operators. He also explained that the introduction of SROs has helped licensed bookmakers to control 60% of the market instead of the 20% they controlled in 2014 and even suggested that black market bookmakers could be involved in the government’s push.

“No other proposed model of consolidation of [bookmakers] and the mechanism for implementing and controlling interactive rates,” chairman of a bookmaking subcommittee of Russia’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry Nikolai Oganezov said as he considered the potential SRO abolition would bring “chaos” to the Russian industry.