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Russia – Sochi to host Russian Gaming Week

By - 21 October 2014

The Russian resort town of Sochi, home to the Winter Olympic Games earlier this year, is to host the Russian Gaming Week from November 5 to 6 2014.

Sochi became one of the latest Russian gambling zones to be signed off when the State Duma in Russia approved a bill to develop two more gambling zones in Crimea and Sochi in order to bring investment and more tourists to the regions, back in July.

RGW Sochi Expo will feature all the major segments of the gaming industry, such as casinos, bookmakers, social gambling, mobile casino gaming apps and the online sector. It will also host a two-day conference that will explore whether the Sochi gambling zone could become the most successful of the existing zones. It will also debate whether foreign casino operators will come to Sochi, the possible legalisation of online poker in the Russian Federation, the procedure for obtaining licenses for gambling activities and the level of competition between Sochi and the other gambling zones in Russia
It will host over 30 experts from the CIS and Europe, over 50 unique reports and endless opportunities for effective cooperation, partnership, networking and socializing with like-minded people.

Russia’s casino sector had reached revenues of around $9bn in 2009, before the government closed the sector down almost overnight and brought in the gambling zones casinos. Dean Macomber, President of Macomber International, recently said that Vladivostok was a ‘regional Asian casino that happens to be in Russia.’

Melco Crown Entertainment will open Vladivostok’s casino resort first later this year with an $110m project with 60 gaming tables, 800 slots and 110 hotel rooms although it will eventually boast a further 100 more VIP tables and another 600 slots.

NagaCorp will spend $350m building a hotel casino with 100 tables and 500 slots although it is likely to open until 2018.

Vladivostok has been the first Russian gambling zone to attract big international operators. Whether the latest zones of Crimea and Sochi will do similarly remains to be seen.

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