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THE MONTHLY JOURNAL FOR THE ONLINE GAMBLING INDUSTRY
VOLUME 14 ISSUE 01 JANUARY 2015
WWW.E-COMLAW.COM
CJEU in favour
of alignment
of licences
The CJEU ruled on 22 January
in Case C-463/13 that EU law
does not preclude Italy from
awarding gambling and betting
licences whose period of
validity is shorter than that of
licences awarded previously.
Stanley International Betting
and subsidiary Stanleybet
challenged the 2012 tender,
claiming that shorter and more
restrictive licences blocked
them from participating in
Italy’s gambling market.
“The ruling states that Art. 49
and 56 TFEU and the principles
of equal treatment and effectiveness must be interpreted as
not precluding national legislation that provides for a new call
for tenders for licences with
shorter validity as a result of the
reorganisation of the system by way of an alignment of
expiry dates,”said Valérie Peano,
Attorney at EGLA.
Italy reformed its gambling
market after previous rulings of
the EU court deemed the exclusion of publicly traded limited
liability companies from
obtaining a licence incompatible with EU law. However
Stanley International appealed
when the licences offered
during the 2012 tender were
valid for a shorter period than
previous licences.
IN THIS ISSUE
Australia Combating
illegal operators 03
UK CAP review &
funds consultation 05
Transparency 07
Tribal Gaming 09
Taxation Double Duty
relief for Isle of Man 11
EU Measures on
consumer protection 12
Wearables 14
Social Gaming 16
Gambling could be caught
in UK ISP ‘adult’ net filters
The gambling industry is facing
the possibility that automatic
filters, to be implemented by
some major UK ISPs to block
access by default to ‘adult
content’ websites, could apply to
gambling sites. So far Sky and
TalkTalk have stated this month
that they will apply such filters;
Sky will do so in late
January/early February and
TalkTalk will do so in February.
“We are in discussion with
many of the ISPs and it is not
yet settled that the filter would
apply to gambling,” said Clive
Hawkswood, Chief Executive of
the
Remote
Gambling
Association. “The ISPs are
considering whether the fact
that we have stringent age
verification controls puts us in
a different category to the other
products that might be
included.”
Although each ISP’s filter will
function differently, in general
customers can remove the
blocks by communicating with
the ISP. For example, TalkTalk’s
Homesafe filter will block
certain websites by default and
present users with the choice of
removing the filter when the
user first visits a blocked site.
The ISPs move to use these
filters is a result of pressure
from Prime Minister David
Cameron, among other politicians, who believe that mandatory online filtering will help
protect children online, but as
yet measures remain optional.
UK ISPs Virgin and BT have not
yet chosen to introduce a
mandatory filter, with Virgin for
example instead providing
customers with the option to
turn on a filter if they wish.
While Hawkswood believes
that should the filters go ahead,
“it is not something that should
cause a major concern,” others
are less sure. “The industry has
started picking up on [the filter
issue], and there is likely to be
real concern. Looking at
HomeSafe, it appears you can
only either opt out of the filter
all together, or choose to allow
individual websites - there
doesn’t seem to be an option to
allow gambling generally
without also allowing pornography, etc. This might favour
the existing big brands in the
UK and (on top of the new
British licence fees and UK tax
burden) could make it doubly
difficult for smaller operators to
compete,” explains Andrew
Danson, Partner at K&L Gates.
Warwick Bartlett, Chief
Executive of Global Betting and
Gaming Consultancy, notes
that “The impact will depend
on how easy it will be to change
the default setting and whether
the ISP will bring this to the
attention of customers. I think
you would start to see some
effect [on site traffic] until
people have come to terms with
their settings.”
Proposed 30% betting tax could
“damage” Czech gaming market
The Czech government is
looking to introduce a tax on
online operators accepting bets
from local customers as part of
the overhaul of its regulatory
regime for the gambling
industry, in response to
infringement action taken
against it by the EC in
November 2013. The rate being
proposed is 30% of gross
gaming revenue and will apply
indiscriminately to operators
whether licensed or otherwise.
Martin Lycka, Legal Advisor at
Betfair, labeled the rates“uneconomic” and “much higher than
rates in the countries that have
regulated their online gambling
markets successfully.”
As to the predicted impact of
these measures, Zdeněk
Beránek, Partner at Peterka &
Partners, noted that “[s]ome
local operators and offshore
operators already warned that
this proposal will damage the
Czech betting market [with]
some offshore operators
informing that they will not
enter.”Lycka echoed these sentiments: “it’s unlikely that the
new regulation will attract
foreign operators,” the effect of
which would be that the
reforms would “by no means
contribute to the reduction of
the size of the unregulated
market and [would] generate
no additional tax revenue for
the Czech Republic budget.”
Whilst, as Beranek highlights,
it is “very early days” for the
draft bill with discussions
ongoing, it is not inconceivable
that, if passed, the proposed
reforms could be subject to
legal challenge at national or EU
level by operators, although
assessing prospects would be
premature at this stage.