By joining forces with Belcasinos, a unit of local casino owner Group Partouche, bwin.party neatly met a requirement to have a presence in Belgium to win a licence for online poker, casino and sports betting. The agreement is a rare bright spot in a tough regulatory environment for online gambling companies across the continent. Betting online on sports events or playing poker on the Internet are increasingly popular pastimes in Europe, where operators say they are held back by unfair and discriminatory rules in many European Union countries.
"It is not a European Union in any way, it is a patchwork of different countries who happen to be in the EU," said Professor Leighton Vaughan Williams, director of the betting research unit at Nottingham Business School in central England. "Different countries have different vested interests and different ideas they are trying to promote. Are they trying to protect consumers or to maximise their tax take?" he said.
The 27 EU member states retain the right to regulate their gambling sectors as they see fit, but rules must comply with EU law, broadly meaning they must be consistent and proportionate. Some companies are scaling back activities in European markets where, they say, regulatory risks are too high or tax rates are punitive. Betting exchange operator Betfair for instance said this week it was halting marketing and investment in unregulated markets, including EU members Cyprus, Germany and Greece.
William Hill, Britain's largest bookmaker, has joined Betfair in pulling out of Greece and has also stopped offering sports betting to German residents because of a 5 percent turnover tax. The stakes are high. Online gambling is growing at an annual rate of almost 15 percent in the EU and will be worth an estimated 13 billion euros ($17 billion) by 2015, according to EU figures.