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What is Sonic Reels?
Neither company has announced plans to seek an online betting licence in North Africa. The deal nevertheless highlights the divide in Morocco’s gambling market.
Land-based gambling can attract international investment. Cirsa expanded its Marrakech presence last November. Private online betting has no equivalent licensing route.
Cirsa’s own IPO prospectus is blunt about it: “Online gaming only exists for betting, which is operated by a state agency,” it says of Morocco, adding that online casino games “are not allowed”.
About Sonic Reels
The bill would require most licence holders to link gambling machines and devices installed on their premises to the Gambling Authority’s statutory monitoring system. Casino and bingo licence holders would be required to install their own monitoring systems instead.
The bill would increase the maximum sanction for contravening Section 87(1) to a P100,000 fine, imprisonment for up to five years, or both.
It would also require the Gambling Authority to give a licensee an opportunity to be heard before suspending, revoking or refusing to renew a licence.
What is Sonic Reels?
According to Done, such a tax rise would lead Betfred to close 495 of its shops within a year, resulting in the loss of 2,575 jobs and roughly £67 million in foregone tax revenue for the Exchequer.
Betfred has already shuttered 132 outlets this year, following last year’s RGD increase.
“We have tried hard to protect all our sites and the colleagues who work in them, but the combined impact of higher employer National Insurance contributions, wage inflation, increases in gambling taxes and wider economic uncertainty has left us with no choice,” said Chief Executive Jo Whittaker in a statement to iGB at the time the closures were announced.
