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About The Great Genie
Cyprus is not the first market to consider whether to block its welfare recipients from using their benefits to gamble, Brazil introduced a similar ban in 2025.
During a session of the House Audit Committee last Thursday, members of parliament (MPs), the Data Protection Commissioner and representatives from the Welfare Benefits Administration Service (WBAS), the Gaming & Casino Supervision Commission and the National Betting Authority (NBA) convened to discuss ways to identify and restrict gambling activity among GMI beneficiaries, as reported by Cyprus Mail.
While the intention is to protect vulnerable households and ensure welfare is spent on essential needs, proposed measures are being complicated by legal, technical and privacy obstacles.
About The Great Genie
The judges highlighted the number of gaming halls in the city remained largely stable after the increase.
The court also dismissed the equal-treatment argument, noting that gaming machines are taxed by the municipality while casino taxation falls to Hesse.
Wiesbaden’s tax, set under local statute, applies to expenditure on gaming machines, and the city said the higher rate was part of its response to strained finances.
About The Great Genie
Ben Robinson, managing partner at Corfai, argues that the American listing achieved what it was supposed to achieve. The problems came afterwards. “The question was which arm of the K-shaped market Flutter would end up on. We have the answer now. Capital is concentrated in a narrow band of technology names and everything else is being marked on earnings.”
A US listing can improve access to capital without making the underlying business more attractive. London has a capital-markets problem. Gambling has an investment problem. The two overlap, but they are not the same thing.
Frank Fantini, founder and publisher emeritus of Eilers-Fantini, thinks the change began before Covid. “There is a tendency to look at the world as pre-Covid and post-Covid,” he says. “But the decline in gaming began earlier than that with the slowdown in new jurisdictions and new projects.”
