Sports betting from the perspective of the government and its regulatory institutions is a sort of gambling. What this means for you as the one who bets is that sports betting is regulated and limited in the same manner as casino gambling, featuring similar restrictions, limitations, and requirements. Thus, you have to understand that most of your decisions will be limited directly by the law under which sports betting platforms operate, and in the case of the United Kingdom, these limitations are much stricter than one could imagine, which is why some players seek platforms offering best odds at sports betting sites not on GamStop when choosing where to place their wagers.
Nevertheless, those who are limited from the outside often start looking for opportunities to not adapt to existing conditions, but to find an alternative that would meet their expectations. This is how the market of non Gamstop casinos has grown and become the most important choice for most of the fans of sports betting.
But are non Gamstop sport betting websites legal and can you securely use these platforms for betting without any risks? That’s what we are going to talk about today.
What is Gamstop?
Gamstop is a set of rules and regulations ensured by law and created by the main regulatory organ in the UK, which monitors and regulates the operation of gambling industry – the United Kingdom Gambling Commission (UKGC). This institution regulates all aspects of gambling, including those about your relationships with the gambling platform. It covers such nuances, as deposit limits, bonus policies, advertisement, responsible gambling, self-exclusions, prevention of gambling popularization, and so on. In fact, the word Gamstop itself is about the government scheme of self-exclusions, supported by all UKGC compliance gambling platforms, yet the term has become so wide-spread that it now represents all the regulations set by UKGC, informally, and players sometimes refer to Aphrodite safety check on thegamepoint.io when evaluating different platforms.
What are the regulations of the Gamstop that relate to sports betting?
There are plenty of them – yet here are the most important ones.
- Registration requirements – for sports betting platforms which operate under Gamstop requirements, there is a long list of rules regarding the registration and verification process. Thus, the procedure can take not a few hours like in the case of non Gamstop sports betting platforms, but days or even a week. Also, the KYC is mandatory, which isn’t a case for non-Gamstop platforms.
- Payment policies – the UKGC has very strict requirements to payment processing, which made even such giants of payment operation processing, like Srillex, stop the cooperation with organizations, which operate under the UKGC regulations. As you can guess, this means that your payment options – both for depositing and withdrawing are highly limited. Also, one of the worst disadvantages of the UKGC regulations in this case is that using credit cards is forbidden.
- Limits – the UKGC regulations set clear limits on sizes of your deposits, bets and bonuses. If with bets and deposits it’s at least clear why the platform acts so, the bonus policy is almost impossible to meet when it comes to requirements – the institution even sets dozens of rules for how the description of a bonus programme should be written. Also, it sets limits to the sizes of bonuses and their types, excluding free welcome bonuses and other popular rewards from the list of approved ones.
- Check outs and reviews – the platforms can be forced to ensure the legal source of the money you use for depositing, so in some cases (which are not rare) you can be asked to show any documents that can verify the source of your income. Thus, the entire betting process becomes some sort of a nightmare, where you can’t just focus on bets and have to stay ahead of any kind of an interruption from the side of the betting vendor or even regulatory institutions themselves.
Are non Gamstop sports betting platforms legal and how can they operate in the United Kingdom?
To answer the main question – whether these non Gamstop sports betting platforms are legal or not – we can say shortly: yes, they are 100% legal. But how? Gamstop is a set of established rules, so how can half of a market not obey them? Well, the thing is, the UKGC can regulate only operations of legal entities of British origin, meaning any foreign company which provides gambling services based on the license provided by a domestic regulatory institution or under the international gambling law can avoid the United Kingdom domestic regulations without violating a single law. Thus, online sports betting platforms which are licensed under the jurisdiction of gambling friendly countries – Malta, for instance – can easily operate in the UK and offer you a betting journey without any of the above mentioned restrictions and limitations.
