Bad time to be a casino owner in Albania

If you are an Albanian, then you are about to see a lot of new real estate buildings for businesses become vacant. The Albanian government with the leadership of Edi Rama have already decided that any live Casino will be forbidden to operate within the city. They will be given permission to continue their business, but only in the outskirts of towns. Online Casino gambling providers are going to have the time of their lives because every gambler in Albania just became their customer.

Unfortunately, the live casino owners will have to somehow adapt to the new regulation and find their customer base outside the town. It may not even pose a serious problem because most of the gamblers in Albania are already middle or lower class citizens. Its also factual that suburbs in Albania are mostly settled by lower class or middle-class citizens, therefore still retaining a large percentage of their core audience, the live casinos are not gone quite yet.

Edi Rama to the rescue

The government with the leadership of Edi Rama have announced that any type of casino operations within the city will be banned from here on out, forcing all the casino owners, slot operators, and sports betting lodge owners to run for their businesses. Rama has already threatened the businesses about potential consequences should they not comply with the new rules and not leave the cities until December 31st. This was mostly a figurative day to choose because Rama wanted to start the new year with a fresh page of “clean” cities and same revenue.

Unfortunately for everyone, Rama was not satisfied with just those regulations, therefore he decided that it was necessary for him to reach out to the media outlets and give them an ultimatum as well. This ultimatum, which was supported by the government demanded that every media channel removed all of the advertisements connected to casinos and gambling within a 24-hour gap or else they would have to face force from the government. We also believe that not only the advertisements but the whole studio would have been removed in the process.

Is this actually warranted?

At a first glance, it looks like there is some kind of Tyranny going on in the country, but honestly, this is exactly what the public voted for and what they got with the face of Rama. Rama seems to have some kind of grudge towards casinos and is tireless in his efforts to bring them down in any way he can. His new regime entails a more online-focused gambling economy than a land-based one. Rama decided to go all the way with his new rules and shut down the Gambling Commission in order for them not to get in the way of some casinos moving away. Therefore if there had been any uncollected fine payments or documents, they will be leaving with the casinos as well. Rama is no news for the Albanian people, he has been campaigning about this since 2013 and finally managed to reach his goals.