Online Casinos in Saudi Arabia

Nothing Is Licensed, and Gambling Sites Are Blocked

Saudi Arabia licenses no gambling. The clearest official statement that bears on online play comes from the communications regulator. In a statement dated 13 May 2018, reporting its 2017 figures, the Communications and Information Technology Commission — now the Communications, Space and Technology Commission — said it had processed more than one million two hundred thousand reports of violating internet links during 2017, and that it seeks to contribute to efforts against pornography and child exploitation online by blocking immoral material in general, such as pornographic material and gambling sites. The same statement records that the Commission had processed more than six and a half million internet links since 2008.

That is a regulator describing gambling websites as immoral material it blocks. It is not a statute, it does not describe a penalty, and it does not name the instrument the blocking rests on. This page says no more than the Commission itself says.

Prize Draws and Prohibited Goods

Two other ministries have said related things in their own fields. The Ministry of Commerce has stated that lottery prizes based on requiring the purchase of goods and products in return for cash prizes or entry into prize draws, or on distributing money inside products offered for sale to consumers, are among the activities prohibited in the Kingdom, and that under the Anti-Commercial Fraud Law and its implementing regulation, making a purchase a condition of entry to a commercial competition is prohibited. That is consumer-protection law about purchase-conditional prize draws rather than a gambling act, and it is reported here as such.

The Ministry of Hajj and Umrah, in its luggage guidance for pilgrims, tells them under the heading “Do not carry with you:” not to bring “Any material that contradicts Islamic culture, for example but not limited to: Alcohol, lottery tools and gambling cards.” The Arabic version of the same page puts it as “أي مواد تخالف الثقافة الإسلامية؛ على سبيل المثال لا الحصر: الكحول وأدوات اليانصيب وكروت القمار.” That is packing guidance rather than a prohibition in law, and it is not the eleven-item list of goods the same page separately bars from entry. What it records is how a Saudi ministry classifies gambling equipment.

What the Position Rests On

It is worth being exact about this, because a reader should be able to judge it. Saudi Arabia has no codified gambling act, and no Saudi instrument setting out the basis of the prohibition was sourced: the Umm Al-Qura official gazette's own search returns nothing for the Arabic terms for gambling, games of chance, gambling machines, lottery, betting or casino. This page therefore states no article and no penalty.

What the position rests on is the four things set out above and nothing more: nothing is licensed; the communications regulator said in 2018 that it blocks gambling sites as immoral material; the Ministry of Commerce treats purchase-conditional prize draws as prohibited under consumer-protection law; and the Ministry of Hajj and Umrah classifies lottery tools and gambling cards as material contradicting Islamic culture that pilgrims are told not to bring. None of those is an instrument prohibiting casino play. No operator is listed for this market.