The long-awaited shutdown of all existing casinos and slot halls in Russia appears to have gone smoothly. At least, that was the situation two days after the July 1 deadline for the gaming stop.

In Moscow, authorities began their checks on the city’s more than 500 now-illegal gaming venues just after midnight, as June turned to July. According to the Moscow Times, Deputy Mayor Sergei Baidakov said that 440 of the 513 businesses had been visited by 2 a.m. July 1, with the remaining operations scheduled for their turn by Wednesday evening.

In St. Petersburg, the head of the city police said his force had gone to 10 closed casinos on the first day—the city had had over 110 gaming businesses—and experienced no problems.

“All 10 places were duly closed,” said Vyacheslav Stepchenko, St. Petersburg chief of police, according to the St. Petersburg Times. “All the former entrances were marked with special notices explaining that the casino or club had stopped its operations. Some of the casinos have already removed the gambling equipment.”

With the disappearance of the casinos and slot halls, Russian gamblers will have to be content for the time being with playing lotteries, frequenting sports betting shops and playing poker—which is officially a sport—in specially licensed sports clubs. Casino gaming will return to Russia when new properties have been completed inside the four officially designated gambling zones.

It all sounds very orderly and promising. But a closer look at the situation reveals potential chaos waiting just around the corner.

None of the new gambling zones has seen even rudimentary development, according to all reports. To turn these remote locations into resort areas that might be attractive to visitors would require an estimated investment of $40 billion.

Even with the promise of improvements, experienced local casino operators have refused to consider moving from the major cities—where all the money is—to gambling zones in the relative middle of nowhere.

“They are just not lucrative for the business,” Lavrenty Gubin of Storm International told the Moscow Times. “Nothing is done there. Besides, no wealthy people will go gambling to a place like Azov,” he said, referring to one of the designated regions.

Storm International operated five of the major casinos in Moscow until last month. When the change became inevitable, the company began moving its business to countries like Armenia, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan and even Mexico.

Since January, Storm has laid off 5,000 of its employees in Russia. That is only a fraction of the estimated 300,000 to 400,000 gaming positions that have been lost across the Russian gaming industry, according to estimates. The government, however, says the number of jobs lost is only 60,000.

One problem expected sooner rather than later is the rise of illegal gambling clubs. The St. Petersburg Times reports there are already rumors of a coming network of private clubs around the city for VIPs.

But the reality of the situation is that the law is the law, and it is not likely to change anytime soon. Like it or not, if casinos are going to be part of the Russian cultural landscape, they are going to be built in the gambling zones.

By GGB Staff

Staff writers for Global Gaming Business magazine. Las Vegas, Nevada.