Unibet no Longer Accepting New Russian Registrations

Changes in Russia have been many lately, and few of these changes seem positive in just about any context. With the country looking to revert to the demeanor of the Soviet Union in more ways than one, online poker came under assault, together with a number of other – admittedly unrelated and much more important – civil liberties.

About a month ago, a number of online gaming companies have been placed on the country’s blacklist and Unibet, a company based in Malta and publicly listed, was among them.

It took the company officials some time to react, but a few days ago they finally decided that Unibet would stop accepting new registrations from players based in Russia.

The two company URLs on which the restrictions have already gone into effect are unibet.com and maria.com.

According to a statement released by Unibet, the company has decided to “temporarily” stop new registrations coming from Russia and as a result of that, to completely remove the “Russia” option from the registration forms of the various online company proprieties.

The announcement also made it clear though that none of the changes would affect the site’s existing Russian customers.

Customers from other Russian-speaking countries would continue to be accepted too. Another company which stopped doing business in Russia was France-based Betclic-Everest, which also effectively pulled its EverestPoker, Betclic and Bet-at-home brands out of the country.

Russia’s anti-online poker push prompted local authorities to compel internet service providers to block players’ access to sites like Unibet, Titan Poker and PokerStars. Freerolls run by the above said operators are sure to experience a massive drop in traffic, probably to the delight of players from other countries.

Russian authorities may in fact be working on some sort of a regulatory framework which would govern online poker in the country, but that – even if it is indeed considered at all – is still a long way off.