Online Gambling & Virtual Tourism In Bulgaria

Gambling in Bulgaria remained underground until the 1990′s when the Bulgarian government recognized the need for legal gambling facilities for it’s citizens. The government enacted laws that liberalized the gambling industry so that citizens could legally gamble in land casinos.

In 2008, Bulgaria decided to legalize online gambling and start collecting some of the taxes on gambling that were leaving the country to offshore operators. They currently tax online gambling operators at a flat tax rate of 10%. Unfortunately, this is a very high rate of tax compared to some offshore gaming jurisdictions that collect less than 1.5% in gambling-related taxes.

With such a high government tax, the online gambling operators are still able to generate huge profits due to the surge of Bulgarians and foreigners that visit their online casinos. The Bulgarian government believes that they can bring in more people to their online casinos, and they’ve recently developed a plan to treat online gambling as virtual tourism. They plan on launching a marketing campaign to bring in tourists to their online casinos from Turkey and other neighboring countries that have outlawed all forms of gambling. Using online gambling as part of their tourism campaign is a sure-fire way to draw attention to Bulgaria and what it has to offer to foreigners.