'The gambling industry has no future in Sverdlovsk Region once the federal law on the state regulation over the gambling activity has come into force on July 1, 2007. Besides, all the gambling houses will either be closed down or moved to the specially designated areas (in Altai, in the Far East, at the boundary of Rostov Region and Krasnodar Territory, and in Kaliningrad) on July 1, 2009,’ President of Ural Gambling Business Development Association Alexei Galaguzov said to UrBC.

‘Some entrepreneurs could invest in these would-be gambling zones, but so far, there have been no people from the gambling industry in the region who said they would be interested in something like this,’ Mr. Galaguzov noted.

'The thing is, the designated territories are not very well suited for gambling. It’s obvious that there are going to be very few people coming there at first. The situation might have changed by 2009, though,’ he said.