The Ghana Football Association recently came out with a statement calling out multiple betting operators that were illegally taking bets on multiple matches hosted by the GFA.
According to the announcement, several betting companies that have official licenses from the Gaming Commission of Ghana illegally hosted betting options on their platforms for games from the Ghana Premier League.
Local law states that any betting operator willing to host betting options for games belonging to a separate entity, in this case, the Ghana Football Association, has the legal obligation to ask for authorization. In this case, multiple Ghanaian companies refused to do so.
The GFA has given them only a couple of days to stop their betting activities, or else face consequences in court.
It could simply be a misunderstanding
Some experts are already speculating that it could have been a misunderstanding from the side of the betting companies. It could have been implied in the license given to them by the Gaming Commission of Ghana that the companies were now legally allowed to service the local population.
This could have been misinterpreted for legally allowed to use locally generated content and offer betting on it. The same misconception had once been the case in Australia, where companies that offer gambling activities like Australia casino roulette tried to branch out into sports betting only to be met with copyright lawsuits within weeks.
The reason why this theory is even being considered is that there are not lawyer teams in companies as large as betting providers who would not have noted about the copyright issues that the company would be facing if they knew about the laws.
Issues with Ghanian betting companies
This is not the first time that Ghanian betting companies have faced serious issues in the country. This time they are lucky to be facing criticism from a non-government organization as compared to their past flukes.
Ghanian politicians have more than on one occasion criticized these companies for avoiding their due taxes and marketing to underage clients in hopes of making them start betting on their platforms.
Naturally, none of it has been confirmed officially yet, but seeing them blatantly ignore common sense laws for copyright in the country is already evidence that there could be some major misconduct in the companies’ activities.
In any shape or form, this discussion is soon to be over with a substantial fine from the GCG and another demand for paying due taxes.