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How Gambling Works In Japan

How Gambling Works In Japan

iGaming is an industry that gets larger and larger, year by year. In December 2019 the EU announced that online gaming revenue exceeded 20bn (euros) and at the current rate of growth, by 2022 that number should be closer to 30bn. One explanation for this is that more and more countries are legalizing online gambling, thus more new players, increasing revenue. Online casinos are working closely with governments all around the world in hopes of getting online gambling legalized everywhere. While the market for online gambling is large in Europe since most countries do permit gambling and online gambling.

The Japanese Market

 In Japan and the rest of Asia, the market has not reached the same level as Europe due to certain laws and regulations varying from country to country. Online gambling is prohibited in Japan according to Criminal code 23, but there are ways to get around this. One way is that sports betting however, these are sanctioned by the government. Another way is via mobile gambling websites playing games.

How To Gamble In Japan 

To this day there are still no legal to gamble in Japan and hosting any online gambling games is also illegal as the only places able to host online are sanctioned by the government. Pachinko is an arcade game that is allowed, by users exchanging their money for tokens and using those tokens at a different location, residents can gamble. Now you might be wondering how do Residence gamble for money? Well, users must look elsewhere. Japan is working very hard to close any unsanctioned gambling operators, but they only have the power within their own country, so residence looks overseas, and can gamble freely. The Japanese government is also putting out IP bans for websites that allow the residence of Japan to gamble online. As you can imagine this is very hard for the government to lock down all the sites as so many are being created daily. Since the Japanese government is not involved with these sites, therefore these sites are not regulated. Being non-regulated this brings about its own pros and cons. A pro is most risks are avoided. A major con is that the site can choose not to pay out at all since its non-regulated, this also means the sites do not have to be provably fair, unfair odds, changing payouts that do not favor the user. Let us say, you have signed up to a foreign gambling site and you have won big! You receive your payment, the next hurdle you will have to face is proving how and where you obtained the money. You clearly cannot say “From gambling” as to where you got that money from is not sanctioned by the government, thereby the money you have won is illegal. This is why sites are switching to gambling with cryptocurrencies as this can negate that problem. 

Conclusion 

Like online gambling anywhere, there is always some risk, Japan maybe more than other because of laws and regulations that are heavily enforced by the government. It is unlikely the legislation on online gambling will change anytime soon. However, after the Olympic in Tokyo, Japan has a much higher chance to have land casinos as well as Japanese online casinos.

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