Sport betting company SportPesa has announced it will end sponsorship of the Kenyan Premier League (KPL) after the government imposed a hefty tax increase on gaming revenue.<\/p>\n
Company boss Ronald Karauri said the 35% increase would negatively affect its business operations.<\/p>\n
KPL’s top official Jack Oguda told the BBC that the news was devastating for Kenyan football.<\/p>\n
SportPesa’s sponsorship of teams outside Kenya will not be affected.<\/p>\n
It currently sponsors English teams Everton and Hull City.<\/p>\n
SportPesa is one of East Africa’s major gambling companies.<\/p>\n
The tax was imposed to deter minors from betting.<\/p>\n
Kenyans are the biggest gamblers in sub-Saharan Africa. Three-quarters of 17-to-35 year olds in Kenya admit to having placed a bet, according to a recent survey.<\/p>\n
Young men use mobile phone apps to predict local and international football matches.<\/p>\n
There have been concerns about its negative effects on young people with parents and religious leader saying it is harmful and urging the government to act.<\/p>\n
Parliament had initially slapped a 50% tax on bookmakers, lottery companies and sports betting sites, which was lowered to 35% before the president signed it to law.<\/p>\n
Mr Karauri told the BBC that the tax hike was likely to drive betting underground.<\/p>\n
In another statement he said that regulation and not taxation was the best way to deal with the concern about betting effects on minors.<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sport betting company SportPesa has announced it will end sponsorship of the Kenyan Premier League (KPL) after the government imposed a hefty tax increase on gaming revenue. Company boss Ronald Karauri said the 35% increase would negatively affect its business operations. KPL’s top official Jack Oguda told the BBC that the news was devastating for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-331319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=331319"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331319\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=331319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=331319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=331319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}