Greece gets gambling bug
22nd January, 2008
Greeks spent over $10 billion (£5.1 billion) on online casino websites last year, according to new figures released by the country's National Federation Of Bookmakers.
The size of the casino gambling market has almost trebled in just three years, with total revenue for the industry now topping the $23 billion mark.
That figure amounts to some eight per cent of the entire country's GDP, making the gambling market a larger contributor to fiscal revenue than Greece's own nationalised telecommunications company.
All nine of the country's government run casinos reported thriving business over the New Year and according to analysts the explosion of online gambling only looks set to bolster the market further.
"Internet gambling is a relatively new phenomenon," Graham Sharp, media relations manager for William Hill, told Athens News. "It was introduced back in 1998 during the football World Cup in France and as people became more computer-literate, online gambling increased."
The growth in online casino gambling comes despite a rarely-enforced law in the European country that actually prohibits electronic betting games. 
