Lebanon is a small country in the Middle East. It borders Syria in all directions but west, where it borders the Mediterranean Sea.
Overview
There are three factors that really shape the online gambling environment for Lebanon. First, the government owns a large percentage of land-based casino operations in the country. Second, there are no laws against online gambling. Third, they block most online gambling sites on the ISP level anyway to protect their interest in land-based gambling.
Some people would see this as a shady way of handling the situation, and it's hard to argue against that. However, players are allowed to play on some foreign sites that have slipped past the ISP-level blacklist. Players can also wager at PlayLebanon, a site that offers lottery tickets on the Internet. This is the only online site that's considered licensed, though it's not licensed in the traditional sense since there is no actual standardized process for receiving a license in this country.
Licensing
As mentioned above, there is no uniform licensing process for sites in Lebanon. What's interesting is that they clearly feel like they want to make money for the government from gambling, and they seem to have a more open attitude towards online gambling than most countries in the area, so they could create a regulatory body in the future and really leverage a licensing system to pull in even more revenues.
Something worth pointing out is that there have been reports of foreign gambling sites having a deal with the government in Lebanon where they are excluded from the ISP-level blacklist in exchange for paying taxes on their earnings, but again, there is no standardized process for this.
Player Protections
Player protection for Internet gambling in Lebanon is great for PlayLebanon because they want to protect the integrity of the games and keep the confidence of the people. However, for foreign sites that have tax deals with Lebanon, it's hard to say how much protection players from Lebanon really have since the arrangements themselves don't seem very official. Until they establish a uniform licensing process, it's hard to recommend playing at any foreign sites that don't have a well-established reputation.
Lebanon is a small country in the Middle East. It borders Syria in all directions but west, where it borders the Mediterranean Sea. Overview There are three factors that really shape the online gambling environment for Lebanon. First, the government owns a large percentage of land-based casino operations in the country. Second, there are no laws against online gambling. Third, they block most online gambling sites on the ISP level anyway to protect their interest in land-based gambling . Some...
