Online Betting In Dubai
Online Betting & Football Odds Best Odds Guaranteed on Horse Racing Free Bet Offers View Sports Betting Odds » 18+T&Cs Apply. £30 Bet £10 Get £30 in Free Bets + £10 Casino Bonus. Min deposit £10. A qualifying bet is a ‘real money’ stake of at least £10. Min odds 1/2 (1.5). Free Bets credited upon qualifying bet settlement and expires after 7 days. Free Bet. Most of the United Arab Emirates’ laws are based on passages from the Quran, which explicitly prohibits gambling. As a result, casinos are illegal in the country and all websites facilitating gambling are. Legal gambling in Dubai. As we’ve already mentioned, gambling is not a very common ‘practice’ in the UAE. But there are 3 cities with gambling facilities – all 8 legal facilities in total. The largest gambling city, of course, is Dubai. It includes table games, slots and video poker machines and online lottery in Dubai.
To outsiders, the UAE including Dubai is a curious place when it comes to betting. They boast one of the most luxurious horse race courses in the world, Meydan Racecourse, which holds 60,000 spectators and includes hotel, restaurants and museum. The highest purse at the track was for roughly $26 million. The track is a state of the art racing complex featuring different surfaces including turf and a highly advanced all-weather track. Dubai is also home to beautiful stadiums and fields for other spectator sports including football, tennis, cricket and motorsports. Yet, with all of this invested in sports, including horse racing (which is widely bet on worldwide), sports betting within the UAE is forbidden according to law.
The UAE even uses ISP filters to block certain content the government does not approve of, including dating websites, gambling, pornography and anything viewed as anti-Islamic.
However, if you are interested in placing bets from the UAE online, there are online sports betting sites that accept UAE players.
How to Bet Online from the UAE?
Some players may find that when they visit various betting sites from the UAE they are blocked and prevented access. Some players get around this by using proxy servers that will make your computer think you are logging in from a different location where websites are not blocked (the UK for instance). This does not change the legality of placing bets online, it only allows you to access sites that are blocked. Hidemyass.com is one that has worked for us. You can find others here (English site).
How to Deposit from the UAE?
The most popular deposit methods in the UAE is Neteller. Most are familiar with the popular credit cards Mastercard and Visa, but most prefer the e-wallet Neteller.
Credit cards are faster and tend to be more convenient, so they are often the preferred method. However, in some cases they are not always approved. In this case, many choose to use ewallets that, once the account is set up, deposits are nearly always successful.
There are added benefits to using ewallets. Many enjoy the privacy they offer, by placing an intermediary between the player and the betting site, where if you make a deposit using a credit card onto a betting site, the transaction will appear as a deposit with that betting site. However, if you use an ewallet such as Neteller, it will show as a deposit with Neteller. Once the money is in your ewallet account, you can then make deposits onto your preferred betting site, but your bank/credit card statements will only show the deposit with Neteller.
Another added benefit is that ewallets like Neteller are accepted by most reputable sites, so you can easily use the same account to fund different betting accounts, which makes it easier to take advantage of different odds at the different sites.
When you want to cash out, you simply withdraw to your ewallet account, then request a payout from the ewallet. The timing of when you receive the funds depends on the withdrawal method.
Popular Sports to Bet on From UAE
Racing, football and tennis are the most popular sports to bet on from the UAE which hosts some major events. Horse racing, while popular for sport, is not as popular to place bets in the UAE for cultural reasons, where horse racing is appreciated more for its history in the region and sport rather than something to bet on. Cricket is also commonly bet on, but the most popular are still football and tennis.
Major Sporting Teams and Events in the UAE
Dubai World Cup – The first DWC race was held in 1996. It is a 10 furlong race on a flat track (no hurdles). It is an annual event held at the Meydan Racecourse since 2010. It has a huge purse, roughly $10 million.
Cricket at DSC Stadium – Home to the Pakistan national cricket team, Pakistan plays One Day Cricket, Twenty20, and Test Cricket events at the DSC stadium.
United Arab Emirates National Cricket Team – ICC members since 1989, UAE has been a strong contender in international cricket events. Winning the ACC Trophy 4 times between 2000 and 2006. ICC Trophy champions in 1994. Winners of 2007 and 2011 WCL one-day internationals.
UAE Football League – Professional Football League in the UEA consisting of 20 clubs.
UAE in the Olympics 2012 – The UAE will be represented in Track (Men’s Triple jump and Women’s 1500m), Women’s weightlifting, Men’s Football, Judo, Swimming (100 m breaststroke) and Shooting (trap, double trap and skeet).
The United Arab Emirates is home to the world’s richest thoroughbred race meeting, the Dubai World Cup Night, for which there is more than $20 million up for grabs in just six contests. So it may come as something of a surprise to find out that gambling is illegal in the Arab country, but in during our research of Asia we again find that some legitimate sites will accept the UAE. Currently, the most active gambling site in the UAE is Betway; an Asian specific brand that works with UAE countries. They are just big enough to not get IP blocked like larger sites such as SpinPalace.
Telecommunications Regulatory Authority
So seriously does the United Arab Emirates government take its prohibition of online gambling that it established the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority and tasked it with producing the Internet Access Management policy, which outlines banned online content categories for Internet service providers. These categories include the following:
- Internet tools for bypassing blocked content
- content for learning criminal skills and illegal drugs
- content containing pornography and nudity, gambling websites
- websites for hacking and malicious codes, content offensive to religions,
- phishing Internet sites – Internet content that downloads spyware
- websites providing unlicensed voice over Internet protocol services
- terrorism content and prohibited top-level domains, which is a reference to the il. domain.
Sheikh Khalifa 2012 Decree
And only recently the United Arab Emirates stiffened up its laws when UAE president Sheikh Khalifa issued a decree that has been described as the most comprehensive cyber-crime law in the Arab world. Sheikh Khalifa’s 2012 decree, which builds on one made in 2006, makes it illegal to use the Internet to transmit, publish or promote pornographic material, gambling activities and indecent acts.
What’s interesting is that Gambling seems to be the least offensive in terms of having the website blacked. At the Telecoms Regulatory Authority its shows the UAE blocks 0% of internet gambling sites. I have heard of a few sites being blocked, but do believe the list to be pretty short from those I have spoken to on message boards about betting online.
The “Get Around”
There are reports that United Arab Emirates online gamblers get around the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority’s infamous Internet Access Management policy by using a web proxy server. There are thousands of free proxy servers but Telecommunications Regulatory Authority officials have found and banned most of them. Other methods, including using a virtual private network or connecting with Remote Desktop to a Microsoft Windows computer outside of the United Arab Emirates, have been used as well but there are even more difficult to pull off consistently. Besides, getting around the Internet Access Management policy does not change the fact that online gambling is an illegal activity.
Online Betting Legal In Dubai
Punishment for Gambling
Article 414 of the United Arab Emirates Penal Code states that whoever gambles shall be punished by detention for a maximum period of two years or by a fine not exceeding 20,000 dirhams. A penalty of detention or a fine shall be inflicted if the crime occurs in a public place, a place open to the public, or in a place or house prepared for gambling. And Article 415 says that punishment by imprisonment for a maximum period of 10 years shall be inflicted upon anyone who opens or runs a place for gambling and prepares such a place for admission of people, as well as anyone who organizes any game of gambling in a public place or in any place or house prepared for such a purpose.
Online Betting In Dubai Al Barsha
The United Arab Emirates has such anti-gambling legislation that it would be silly to think that the environment will change. Few countries are more committed than the federation of Abu Dhabi, Ajman, Dubai, Fujairah, Ras al-Khaimah, Sharjah and Umm al-Quwain to prohibiting gambling.
We can not condone gambling in the UAE, but again, it goes on all the time on the internet according to reports at Betway.