La Marocaine des Jeux et des Sports (MDJS) recently sent a warning letter to Moroccan individuals advertising the Russian illegal sports betting company 1xBet through their social media accounts.
Created in 1962, MDJS is the state lottery and the organization that has a monopoly on the organization and execution of bets on all sporting events throughout Morocco, including virtual competitions, with the exception of horse racing and greyhound racing. MDJS is charged with ensuring the legality, safety and reliability of gaming operations, the transparency of their work under the control of government authorities and regulators.
And in August of this year, Moroccan officials, one way or another connected with lotteries and gambling, banking and financial activities, received an official notice from MDJS with a reminder that the activities of the sports betting site 1xBet are illegal and unauthorized in Morocco. The warning letter sent by MDJS’s lawyer also includes a reminder that promotion of this site is subject to legal action.
In its letter, MDJS demands to immediately cease any cooperation with the Russian operator. The organization recalled that in 2023 it filed a complaint against 1xBet, accusing it of violations of “the regulation of gaming houses and lotteries.” The complaint is directed against anyone who is directly or indirectly involved in illegal sports betting.
Addressees of the MDJS included the governor of the Al-Maghrib Bank (Morocco’s central bank), the director of the Office des Changes (a division of the Moroccan Ministry of Finance dealing with foreign exchange regulation and control), as well as other public and private institutions.
It must be said that this is not the first explanation from MDJS about the illegal activities of a bookmaker. Online sports betting sites 1xBet have been operating completely illegally in Morocco for several years. According to MDJS, 1xBet accepts bets mainly in three ways in available currencies, namely: Moroccan bank cards, electronic wallets, including cryptocurrency, as well as payments through local intermediaries.
In October of this year, to combat illegal activities of 1xBet joined and the Moroccan Sports Press Association (AMPS), which issued a statement about the rise of illegal sports betting, especially among young people. The association called illegal sports betting a “cancer” of society that undermines the integrity of national sports, and 1xBet is the main distributor of this evil.
The authorities cannot even determine exactly when the 1xBet platform appeared and began operating in the country. The reason is simple. The company does not have an official legal presence in Morocco, which was confirmed by a 1xBet representative responding to an email from one of the local publications: “We do not have a legal entity or subsidiaries in Morocco.” This, by the way, also applies to many countries where the 1xBet.com website or its clones are available.
The 1XBET-maroc.com website looks exactly like 1XBET.com, but does not contain the required legal notices. The website states that “1xBet is a Russian company that has been present in Morocco for several years.” The site contains the promotional code “1XBETmaroc2019”, which indicates that the operator began accepting bets from Moroccans back in 2019. In Morocco, 1xBet is also available through two other mirror sites that resemble the original site: Melbet.com and betwinner.com. They offer the same types of games (betting and gambling) as well as the same odds. In the kingdom, 1xBet only repeated its mirror site strategy used in other countries. In France in 2017, the justice system numbered several dozen. A study by the Asian Racing Federation published in 2021 lists 12,000 sites associated with 1xBet.
Starting in 2022, 1xBet is running an aggressive communication campaign in Morocco to attract new customers and their money. A significant part of this campaign is advertising on an unprecedented scale. This was first noticed during the African Cup of Nations, where the “Lions of Atlas” (as the Moroccan football team is called) reached the quarter-finals amid advertising and billboards promoting 1xBet.
Advertising banners measuring 4×4 meters were installed along highways and at road intersections in major Moroccan cities. As in the Russian-language segment, the illegal bookmaker hired local stars, for example, popular rappers, to promote itself in Africa. The main target is youth.
The company has also launched an application called OneX-Sport Helper, allowing those who download it to place bets on one of its brands, namely 1xBet, 1Win and others. Even if its site from Morocco is blocked today, you can easily place bets through a VPN without the slightest problem.
To make matters worse, 1xBet has expanded its presence in the Moroccan market by employing a significant network of agents on the ground who allow players to continue betting in different currencies. The problem is compounded by the fact that some local banks allow players to pay Moroccan cards in dirhams or foreign currency with an illegal operator.
Moreover, 1xBet wholesale and retail bribes various influential characters and entire organizations in Morocco. This expansion involves sponsorship of sports associations and clubs experiencing financial difficulties. Bookmakers, in particular, managed to become partners of such large sports clubs as, for example, the football clubs Raja de Casablanca and Jeunesse Sportif de Soualem, as well as the basketball club AS Salé.
For $60 million, 1xBet managed to buy a partnership with the Confederation of African Football (CAF) for a period of 10 years. This alliance was intended to create the illusion of legitimacy of the illegal bookmaker among African gamblers. The partnership with CAF caused confusion in the minds of Moroccans, who ended up believing that 1xBet was legal because the bookmaker’s logo appeared during matches of African competitions broadcast by the National Corporation for Radio and Television (SNRT) channels.
Thus, illegal status almost does not prevent the gaming platform from collecting money in Morocco, but, as it turns out, it also gives some competitive advantages over the organizers of legal games. Thus, according to Moroccan experts, 1xBet also owes its success to a very high “return to player” (RTP) coefficient. This coefficient is determined by the percentage of money redistributed to the player by the bookmaker. Roughly speaking, this is the percentage of the bookmaker’s bets that is returned to players in the form of winnings. By operating illegally, the bookmaker can afford a high return rate. This allows you to attract a larger number of players and earn money through a larger shaft.
In Morocco, 1xBet has an RTP of over 85%, compared to 66% for the legal MDJS. For this reason, while technically a monopoly, MDJS ends up generating only 35% of betting revenue in Morocco. In 2023, MJDS revenues reached AED 4.45 billion ($450 million) out of a total AED 12.63 billion ($1.28 billion). A huge loss for a state-owned company that operates legally, follows tax laws, and also has to pay 600 million dirhams ($61.02 million) a year to the National Fund for the Development of Sports (FNDS).
1xBet continues to operate in violation of local laws and international regulations, in particular the Macolin Convention, which Morocco has acceded to since 2021.
The Macaulin Convention is the legal instrument and the only international law on the manipulation of sporting competitions. It requires government agencies to cooperate with sports organizations, betting operators and competition organizers to prevent, detect and punish the manipulation of sports competitions. It offers a common legal framework for effective international cooperation in response to this global threat.
The Makolin Convention entered into force on September 1, 2019. It was ratified by France, Greece, Iceland, Italy, Lithuania, Norway, Portugal, the Republic of Moldova, Switzerland and Ukraine. It was signed by 32 other European states, as well as Australia and Morocco.
It was the violation of this convention that served as the basis for a criminal investigation against 1xBet in Morocco. A year ago, according to the same MDJS, the kingdom’s prosecutor’s office opened a case against the bookmaker company.
Moroccan edition of Le Matin published an interviewwith Philippe Auclair, an investigative journalist specializing in the fight against illegal sports betting. This is what Auclair said when answering the question about what the real danger is with 1xBet:
As recent events and new letters of warning about possible legal consequences for persons associated with 1xBet show, the Moroccan authorities are far from solving the 1xBet problem in the kingdom. The ball is in the court of the prosecutor’s office and the Ministry of Justice. Information about the progress of the investigation is reported to the press very irregularly and does not yet indicate great success of Moroccan justice in the fight against the criminal network. This is not surprising, given the specific nature of the network’s activities.
It may be recalled that the owners of 1xBet Roman Semiokhin, Sergey Karshkov and Dmitry Kazorin initially founded their bookmaking business in Bryansk, where they themselves are from. Since the company’s activities in Russia were also declared illegal, a criminal case was brought against them. All three are wanted and are hiding abroad. But this does not prevent their criminal organization from continuing to operate in their homeland.
While Semiokhin, Karshkov and Kazorin are being sought by the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation for the Bryansk Region, their platform is broadcasting online football matches from a children’s football school in Bryansk and accepting bets on their outcome. Here, it must be said, 1xBet violates the law squarely – not only does it operate in territory where it operates outside the law, it also collects bets on competitions with the participation of minor athletes, which is also illegal.
It must be assumed that completely eradicating the criminal activities of 1xBet in Morocco will not be easier than in the Russian Federation. However, without the active participation of law enforcement agencies of those countries in which the organizers of the criminal network are hiding, and without their arrest, combating the activity and presence of 1xBet is as difficult as eradicating the trade in drugs, weapons or prostitution.
