Gambling laws in the UK and Norway, how do they compare?

Gambling laws

Gambling exists in both the United Kingdom and in Norway, but both countries have very different  regulations and legislation surrounding gambling and casinos.

Keep reading to explore the two different worlds that surround gambling.

Bookmakers

In the UK, you can easily take a walk down a small town’s street and spot at least two bookmakers. In bigger towns, this number significantly increases, with over 9,000 bookmakers in the whole of the UK.

Bookmakers like William Hill, Coral, Ladbrokes, make up a large part of Britain’s high streets. These bookmakers, or “bookies” are mostly privately owned with a few exceptions that are publicly owned and listed on the stock market.

This is a drastically different picture of how it is in Norway. There are no bookmarkers, public or private. There is only one, state-owned way to bet, and that is through Norsk Tipping.

Norsk Tipping

With the state-owned Norsk Tipping, the regulations are strict. You can only lose a certain amount of money in one day, for a certain duration and you have to be over 18 years old to play.

There seems to be a large focus on self-awareness in Norway when it comes to gambling and betting. Many of the initiatives have been developed to promote self-control and self-awareness.

In the UK, the legal age to gamble is also 18 years old, however, there isn’t so much emphasis on self-awareness or self-control. This is, however, important, since you can place bets wherever you are from your phone. There are of course many non-profit organisations that are available to those who are addicted. But with so many physical and online bookmakers it makes it hard to regulate betting.

Betting Advertisements

When it comes to advertising betting or gambling in the UK, there are some tough regulations that must be adhered to. For example, online casinos are not able to advertise on TV until after 9 pm. Also, bookmakers and casinos must not feature any characters between the ages of 18-24 participating in the actual gambling. MP’s recently passed an order to remove all gambling from TV and radio during the lockdown.

The UK’s advertising is very strict and is monitored by a whole organisation, to keep it safe.

However, in Norway, all betting and gambling advertising is completely banned. So much so, that the Norwegian government recently passed a bill to order all internet firms and providers to ban access to all online gambling adverts.

TV gambling adverts are already banned in Norway, but with technology increasing, the government took additional actions to try and remove these types of ads from Norway’s internet system.

Stark differences

Whether you are an avid gambler, or just do it for fun once in a while, the differences in regulations and laws are interesting. Norway’s strict approach is certainly interesting and should be praised for its focus on self-awareness and self-control to keep gambling safe and entertaining.

Source: https://casinospesialisten.net