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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.
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Singapore has also imposed a highly controlled casino model, with casinos embedded within enormous integrated resorts and accompanied by entry controls and social safeguards. But by incorporating other forms of entertainment into their resorts, Marina Bay Sands and Resorts World Sentosa have proved hugely successful businesses that blend casino gaming with complementing luxury retail, hotels and entertainment.
Genting Singapore’s flagship Resorts World Sentosa (RWS) offers a smorgasbord of non-gaming entertainments, including Universal Studios Singapore. “These different businesses are planned and operated as one connected destination for leisure visitors, families, business travellers and event delegates, with the aim to widen the destination’s appeal, encourage longer stays and support spending across a broader tourism ecosystem,” a Genting Singapore spokesperson tells iGB.
Singapore’s experience shows that tourism growth and stringent social safeguards need not be mutually exclusive. Since its IRs opened, international visitor arrivals have risen from 9.7 million in 2009 to 16.9 million in 2025, while tourism receipts more than doubled from S$12.4 billion to a record S$32.8 billion.
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The AiA has called for collaboration in the form of strengthening cooperation, sharing good practices and maintaining safer gambling at the forefront of policy agenda.
Additionally, the Africa Safer Gambling Week will emphasise the importance of channelisation into legal offerings, with the AiA warning the black market often neglects player protection.
Olabimpe Akingba, head of responsible gaming at pawaTech and AiA board member, said the initiative reflects the association’s push to turn cross-border collaboration within Africa’s iGaming sector into tangible action on player protection.
