If you want to avoid any troubles with your winning withdrawals and be protected from any fraudulent actions, it is essential that your betting experience is legal. So how to make sure that you bet on sports legally?
Make sure you are aware of the governmental regulations of your country
To start with, you have to stop for a while to learn thoroughly that the rules of your country of residence, state, or city allow online gambling and check if there are any restrictions or peculiarities in the current law. For instance, in the United States, online betting is generally legal; however, there is a range of states where wagering on sports is prohibited by the law. In the Russian Federation and a range of CIS countries, online sports betting is almost totally banned, and there are only a few legal online bookies.
If you even manage to register on a betting site (sometimes even the top online sports betting sites accept players from the countries where betting is illegal, because their licenses still cover these countries), you might face a range of issues that may arise only after you will have already made several deposits and then require a withdrawal of your winnings. In this case, there is little chance the site’s customer support will be able to help you, as according to most betting companies, it is the player’s responsibility to check all terms and conditions before signing up.
Find the right website
If you learned that betting with online bookies is legal in your country, you are supposed to check the reviews of different sites to see if their license covers your place of residence. The UK and Irish users can be based on the UK Gambling Commission License, the European sites usually work under the Maltese registration.
Check all the sites to make sure that:
- It is the official legal site and not a mirror
- It has a valid gambling commission license
- It has at least several positive reviews from real people
- Violation of the gambling platform rules
Another important rule of legal online betting is to strictly follow the rules of the betting site you use for your wagering. Most decent legal bookmakers do not allow professional bettors and cut their winnings in the best case; the worst thing that can happen is when your account is blocked and all winnings are excluded from your deposit to the advantage of the bookmaker.
Severe violation includes using some illegal techniques that help to increase the winnings. Among them is the scam in poker rooms, where players gather against one newly registered customer in order to share all winnings between them, or wagering on different bets using several bookies. If you are suspected of such actions, most likely the bookmaker will not give you any payout, or cut your prizes significantly so you will gain no profit, and, at the same time, the risk of losing your deposit.
What exactly might happen if I bet illegally?
Don’t worry, you will not face any prosecution as the user of a sports betting website, even if there is a strict ban on online gambling in your country; most countries’ authorities do not punish the citizens for breaking this law, as it is mainly aimed at the holders of the illegal platforms. It is easily explained by the fact that the government can not expect a plain bettor to make professional expertise of an online sportsbook to check if it is legal or not.
However, by disclaiming responsibility from a player, the authorities also disclose it from themselves, too. What does it mean? If a gambling platform does not pay your winnings, bans your account for some unobvious reason, or will violate your rights in any other way, for instance, using your private information for personal advantage, you will hardly receive any support from the public authorities.
Quick Summary
As you see, the bettor is interested in gambling legally mainly for protecting their own rights. Thus, if you do not follow the tips above you will be the first person to suffer from breaking the rules of fair gambling.