The Ministry of Finance (MoF) is gathering opinions on a draft decree on sports betting.

Audience watching English Football Premier League in HCM City

Audience watching English Football Premier League in HCM City

The draft decree stipulates betting on horse and dog racing as well as international football.

The draft regulation sets a limit on the amounts gambled and the list of tournaments and matches subjected to the betting.

Concerning football betting, the draft regulation stipulates that people should be allowed to bet a maximum of VND1 million (USD47.74) per wager. The betting will be limited to match results.

Phan Thi Thu Hien, Deputy Director of the MoF’s Banking and Financial Institutions Department, said the limit to the amount of money bet was aimed at preventing people wasting huge amounts of their income.

“The limit was also to prevent other social consequences while the ban on betting on domestic football results was to prevent possible match fixing,” Hien noted.

Le Hung Dung, Vice Chairman of the Vietnam Football Federation (VFF), who is also a banking and finance expert, said, “The draft was carefully compiled and the enforcement would be only piloted.”

According to him, he has reiterated legalisation as betting would increase state budget revenues as many local Vietnamese spend billions of USD on illegal betting abroad annually.

He said that after a certain period, the authorities should loosen regulations so as to foster the betting industry and deter illegal gambling.

VFF Chairman Nguyen Trong Hy supported a ban on betting on domestic football.

“More attention should be paid to diversifying the means and levels of betting to make it attractive enough to lure people away from illegal betting,” Hy emphasised.

Difficult to prevent illegal betting

Many people said that the regulation would be not strict enough to prevent illegal betting as illegal betting on domestic footfall are still popular in the country while the regulation does not has any stipulation on the aspect.

Football bets are currently not limited to live broadcast football matches as mentioned in the draft.

In early 2013, the Police Department for Investigation of Social Order-Related Crimes (C45) and the Department of High-tech Crime Prevention (C50) under the Ministry of Public Security shut a link to an online football betting network abroad worth up hundreds of billions of VND.

General Ho Sy Tien, Director of the C45 Department said such activities are becoming more common.

It has been proposed that if the country legalises betting at some point in the future, which would allow foreign betting companies to open branches in Vietnam for local firms to learn from. However the draft regulations claim local firms are competent enough to provide the services.

NLD/dtinews