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Government regulators in Canada are up in arms over a deal inked this past week whereby Toronto’s Virgin Gaming will feature Electronic Arts (EA Games) popular sports video games on its online gambling platform.
Nina Littman-Sharp, manager of the problem-gambling service at Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, expressed concern over the deal in an interview with the Vancouver Sun.
“It’s bridging the gap between online gaming and online gambling,” she said. “We already see people who have problems with both. I can already see this being one more element that we are going to start to be seeing in treatment.”
To date, the Virgin platform only allowed for sponsored tournaments similar to what we see in the world of poker.
Virgin plans to open up a game-by-game wagering system, which will allow gamers to create their own tournaments and challenge others online for real cash prizes. Prizes can be in the tens of thousands of dollars.
“This is the biggest deal that we’ve had,” said William Levy, president of Virgin Gaming.
“We have the entry fee-based tournaments. We also have sponsored tournaments. Let’s say there was a $10 entry fee tournament, you could click ‘enter now,’ agree to the terms and conditions and then we deduct the $10 from your account and put it towards the pot.”
Virgin Gaming is a division of the Richard Branson empire.
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- Aaron Goldstein, Gambling911.com
