After last week's blockage of the first 325 unlicensed online gambling operators in Colombia, giant online poker providers PokerStars, informed their local Colombian customers that as from Monday 17th July they will no longer provide real money poker gambling service to them.
The name PokerStars was one of the high rated names which was mentioned on the list back in March so this has come to no surprise to be honest.
Colombia is the first from the Latin American region to fully regulate its online gambling when legislators formulated a solid regulatory framework last fall. It was only by the end of June when Coljuegos officially issued the first ever license for an iGaming provider. These were the local operators of Aquila Global Group together with their wplay.co betting website.
The message sent to the Colombian players stated that;
"PokerStars is leaving the market due to the new regulatory system and the fact that it did not hold a license to operate legally in the country."
Having said that however, PokerStars did give an indication that they are willing to apply for an official gaming licence. That would mean that PokerStars might return to the Colombian gaming industry once again should they be granted the official licence.
Colombian authorities have been noticing the potential in the igaming industry in their country and are rightfully doing their best to capitalize as much as possible from the industry. There is also further interest of doing the same thing from neighbouring Latin American countries like Brazil and Mexico, amongst others, to open up their online gambling markets and to also capitalize as much as possible from it.
