Antigua-Barbuda "confident" Britain will allow gambling ads

The UK Department for Culture, Media and Sport last week published a so-called "white list" of areas from which gaming websites will be allowed to advertise on television, radio and in print starting September 1.

Antigua is still being considered for the list, which includes the European Union, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Gibraltar, the Isle of Man and Alderney, the department said. The Netherlands Antilles has been excluded.

The country should be allowed to advertise because its "regulatory and licensing objectives are parallel to the UK’s intended remote gaming regulatory regime," Errol Cort, finance minister of the Caribbean nation of 75,000, said in a statement.

The UK restrictions aim to ensure that new legislation - which permits online gaming products to be advertised on TV for the first time and allow for the development of a Las Vegas-style super casino - doesn’t lead to an increase in problem gambling. Britain is seeking to prevent underage gaming, promote fairness and combat illicit activities and financial crimes.

The impact on Antiguan betting companies will be limited even if the UK rejects the country’s application, said Mark Mendel, Antigua’s legal counsel. "It would affect only a few, and not in any dramatic way," he said in a telephone interview on Monday. Still, "I’m sure we’ll end up on the white list sooner or later, probably sooner. We’re still discussing a couple of issues, but it should be resolved" by the end of the month.

Antigua was one of the first nations to legalise, licence and regulate online gaming. The nation developed Internet gambling to boost a tourism-dependent economy after several hurricanes in the 1990s. "Antigua has been regulating this industry for over 10 years and the UK is only starting," Mendel said.

In April 2005, Antigua scored a victory against US online gambling restrictions when the World Trade Organization ruled that legislation criminalizing Internet betting violated global laws. US residents account for about half of the estimated us$ 12 billion global market for online betting.

The country, the smallest government ever to lodge a WTO complaint, said in June that it’s entitled to us$ 3.44 billion in compensation from the US to penalise the Bush administration for failing to let American place bets with foreign Internet sites.

Antigua has less than 10 percent of the market for online betting, down from about 50 percent in 2002, Mendel said.