7 1 January 2008

News:

Licensed remote gambling operators based in Tasmania will be able to advertise in the UK, whereas operators licensed by Antigua or Kahnawá:ke will not, following a decision from James Purnell, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. Tasmania will be added to the 'white list' of jurisdictions where licensed online gambling operators will be allowed to advertise in the UK as if they were a European Economic Area (EEA) state, whereas applications from Antigua and Kahnawá:ke were rejected, confirmed the Gambling Commission on 11 January.

The European Gaming and Betting Association (EGBA), which promotes the interests of Europe's online betting operators, has lodged a formal complaint with the European Commission over Germany's Interstate Treaty on Gambling.

Swedish daily newspaper, Aftonbladet, has asked the European Commission to take 'strong and decisive measures' against Swedish authorities over their crack down on the acceptance of gambling advertising from foreign operators in newspapers.

Features:

Germany's Interstate Treaty on Gambling represents a novel approach to tackling the issue of maintaining state sponsored gambling. The Interstate Treaty bans all internet gambling and the advertising of it, including the internet offerings of the state operators, while at the same time permitting them to offer limited offline gambling.

Professor Mark Griffiths, one of two authors of the British Gambling Prevalence Study, comments on the need for the online gambling industry to adopt best practice and what this should involve in order to dispel government and public concerns about addiction to online gambling.

Germany decided last year on a new legal framework designed to uphold its state gambling monopoly using a new interstate treaty banning internet gambling, which was approved by the 16 German states in the weeks before Christmas. Martin Arendts, an attorney with Arendts Anwälte, examines the key points of the regulations, legal issues with them under EU law and assesses the outlook for the future.

Following BetonSports and Neteller's decision to cooperate with the US Department of Justice (DoJ) in its investigation into illegal internet wagering, PartyGaming and 888 Holdings have reportedly entered into similar discussions with the DoJ. Linda J. Shorey, Jeffrey L. Bornstein, Fred D. Heather, Anthony R. Holtzman and Ashley Camron of Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Preston Gates Ellis LLP examine these agreements.

As 2007 drew to a close, we asked members of our editorial board what they felt would be the key issues for 2008. In this article, they set out their views.

France and the European Commission recently announced that they had laid the foundations for an agreement on opening the online gambling market for horse racing and sports betting, previously reserved for state monopolies. Mark Miller, a solicitor and avocat with Hammonds Hausmann, examines the history of French gambling explaining that a measured opening should not come as a surprise, however the French government will defend its position that restrictions on sports betting are necessary both to protect the public and to provide funding, for example, to sporting organisations.