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Once again following the recent Bwin v. Santa Casa decision, the European Court of Justice has declared an European gaming monopoly compliant with the EU principles to provide services in two decisions involving Betfair and Ladbrokes against the Dutch gaming monopoly.
To give you a but of background information, Dutch legislation in relation to games of chance is based on a system of exclusive licenses under which only one license is granted in respect of each of the games of chance authorized and the offering games of chance interactively via the internet in the Netherlands is completely banned.
De Lotto is a non-profit-making foundation holding a license for the organization of sports-related prize competitions, the lottery and numbers games and challenged the offering by Ladbrokes and Betfair of games to Dutch residents in absence of the required license.
The ECJ was involved in relation to the compliance of the Dutch exclusive license system with the EU principle to provide services and held that:
“Article 49 EC must be interpreted as not precluding legislation of a Member State, such as the legislation at issue in the main proceedings, under which exclusive rights to organize and promote games of chance are conferred on a single operator, and which prohibits any other operator, including an operator established in another Member State, from offering via the internet services within the scope of that regime in the territory of the first Member State”.
Moreover in the Ladbrokes case the court added:
“it is for the national court to determine whether unlawful gaming activities constitute a problem in the Member State concerned which might be solved by the expansion of authorized and regulated activities, and whether that expansion is on such a scale as to make it impossible to reconcile with the objective of curbing such addiction”.
This decision seems to be a further confirmation that until the gaming legislation of the EU Member States will be harmonized, the European Court of Justice is likely to support local gaming monopolies and licensing regimes denying the mutual recognition of other EU licenses as the Italian regime that has been recently approved by the EU. Operators are likely to obtain a local license in each EU Member State where it is possible to apply for it and such approach is likely to lead to the end of the current .COM websites.
Do you want to share your thoughts on the above? Feel free to contact me, Giulio Coraggio.
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