For major bookmakers there is probably never really a good time to announce that you’ll be withdrawing from 19 different countries, but doing it up to the World Cup in Brazil and lose out on millions in potential revenue is probably an even worse time than any other.
Still this is what Betfred just did, as they announced that they have pulled out of a long list of countries due to regulatory reasons. The news about the withdrawal came from Playtech owned Pokerstrategy.com who wrote a statement:
“Please be advised that Betfred Poker is withdrawing on Monday, June 09 from a number of countries due to regulatory and general licensing processes. This means that all accounts from those territories will be closed and players have 30 days to withdraw their money.”.
The list of countries which Betfred has chosen to withdraw from was also shown in the statement:
South Africa, Denmark, German, Sweden, Netherlands, Norway, Finland, Belgium, Poland, Bulgaria, Austria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Japan, Latvia, Portugal, Slovakia, Ukraine and Romania.
There has not been an official explanation towards why Betfred has gone out of all of these countries, besides the “regulatory reasons”, which makes no sense for a country like Denmark, who has been regulated for more than 2.5 years now.