Colombia Officially Legalizes Live Casino

Colombia has been making huge leaps in the legalization of online gambling recently. Last year, Coljuegos – the Colombian gambling commission and main regulating body – began to finally issue licenses to allow various online casino operators to provide their services within the country. Since then, at least three different websites have launched .co domains in order to operate in Colombia, with a lot more on the way. With that said, their betting and casino services still remain limited compared to those of their European brethren, which is why Coljuegos has been moving forward with making further legalizations in order to give Colombian gamblers more freedom. Their latest development, which came into effect on November 14th, would allow for casinos to feature a live section.

Live casino is an extremely popular gambling activity which allows players to bet on real, physical, tangible casino games such as roulette and blackjack, which happen in a land-based casino (or at least on a set that’s designed to look like one). The games are broadcasted live through webcam, essentially streamed to the various gamblers, who are allowed to influence them and place bets on them. For example, in a game of live blackjack, you may place a bet and request the dealer to give you cards. As such, a real person curates your casino experience, just as they would in a real casino. Live casinos have been crazily popular in Europe not just because of the sense of tangibility and realism they offer, but also due to their variety and various themes and trends. In a typical online casino there will be multiple different rooms for each game with different limits, dealers/croupiers, spoken languages and even topics of discussion (it’s not too uncommon to see a room where the dealer chats with its players about politics or sports while dealing cards).

Colombia wanted a piece of the pie that Europe was having, which was the primary cause behind the legalization – to increase the liquidity of the country’s gambling scene. So far, licenses have been issued to allowed Colombians to enjoy live blackjack, roulette and, interestingly enough, baccarat. In addition, Colombian players who enjoy poker will also be able to play that live online, and internationally, too! According to the new laws and regulations put into place, they’ll be able to play against people from France, Italy, Portugal, Spain and other countries across the world that have agreed to share their liquidity when it comes to poker. In very simple terms, what that means is that Colombians can join various international rooms and, subsequently, win the price pools of other players, converted into pesos. While Colombia is still taking baby steps into the world of online gambling, things are looking more than promising for the time being, and it’ll certainly be exciting to see where things are headed next!