Abu Dhabi
The UAE’s only licensed lottery is reported to have launched two online betting platforms offering both online casino and sports betting to customers.
According to local media outlet Arabian Gulf Business Insights, the platforms – named TrueWin and Dream Island – are currently live and offering wagers on sports such as football, tennis, cricket and basketball plus live dealer games, poker, roulette and slots.
This is despite no law officially legalizing gambling having been published within the UAE. The operator of the sites, Momentum, does however run the Emirates’ only licensed lottery and as such is the sole company with any sort of permission to offer “legal” gambling.
Notably, the truewin.ae domain name was registered in the UAE in March 2023, the AGBI report states – roughly six months before the establishment of the General Commercial Gaming Regulatory Authority (GCGRA), while Dream Island was registered even earlier in 2020.
Inside Asian Gaming has reached out to the GCGRA for comment.
While there is no formal law yet recognizing legal gambling, the regulator has been issuing various operator and supplier licenses over the past two years – most notably to Wynn Resorts for its US$5.1 billion integrated resort development in Ras Al Khaimah.
There have also been 16 supplier licenses issued to the likes of Aristocrat, Light & Wonder, IGT, Konami and Sportradar, while in recent days another iGaming and sportsbook operator, Coin Technology Projects LLC, has been listed on the GCGRA website – seemingly offering online gaming via a platform called Play 971.
A recent report by Vixio GamblingCompliance claims that the GCGRA is poised to allow one B2C online gaming license per emirate for each of the country’s seven Emirates, mirroring the model said to be in place for land-based casino gaming.
A former sports journalist in Sydney, Australia, Ben has been Managing Editor of Inside Asian Gaming since early 2016. He played a leading role in developing and launching IAG Breakfast Briefing in April 2017 and oversees as well as being a key contributor to all of IAG’s editorial pursuits.
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