Not everything is going as planned for the Czech Republic online gambling authorities, as a mixture of high taxes and bureaucracy have kept foreign operators from investing in the local market.
As things stand, Pokerstars is the only foreign owned poker operator, as PartyPoker recently decided to not opt for a license. William Hill had followed the same path a few months earlier, as the extravagant taxes had made investing in the Czech Republic iGaming sector commercially unviable.
The Ministry of Finance has hinted that around 10 foreign operators have already applied for a licence and asked for patience before the licenses are reviewed and eventually awarded. Needless to say, the two year review clause on the Gambling Act, has offered more concerns than reassurances to the online betting sites and casinos.
According to Tereza Cejpova, head of the legal and methodology unit at the State Oversight Over Gambling Department of the Ministry of Finance: "Usually the foreign applicants have two main issues. The first of them is the face-to-face verification as a primary verification principle and the other one is that our procedures are formal and time consuming.”