SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
The Russian Federal Anti-Monopoly Service (FAS), has asked Google to remove all gambling advertising targeting Russian consumers, or face administrative penalties for breaching Russian advertising standards.
The FAS found online gambling advertisements displayed on Google’s search engine. Currently Google does not allow for online gambling advertising to display on its Russian search engine.
Google replied to FAS stating that the banned advertising, had been undertaken by advertisers using bots which could bypass Google’s Russian search filters.
A Google statement read “Unfortunately, in some cases questionable advertisers attempt to find holes in our filters by various means and sometimes they succeed. We are constantly improving our system and working on the reliability of our filters,”
Russia currently holds a stringent stance against online gambling, the Russian government monitor several unlicensed online gambling websites, and in many instances have blocked access to websites by restricting regional ISP’s and imposing transactional payment blocks on Russian credit card payments.
In July the Russian government created a blacklist of offending sites which it stated had breached Russian laws, by advertising to Russian consumers. The list included, Sportingbet, PartyPoker, Carbon Gaming and PokerStars.
