Casino City's iGaming Pocket Directory - 2013 Edition

104 Sponsored by Casino City’s iGaming Pocket Directory JURISDICTIONS There were two main reasons for the lower prices: 1. It requires less overhead to run an online gaming business than it does to run a brick-and-mortar business. 2. Most of the online gaming businesses located themselves in tax-friendly jurisdictions, giving them additional freedom to offer better prices. Punters flocked to the new online offerings, and an industry was born. And not only was it a new industry, it was a cross-border industry – and a new school of thinking about regulations opened up. Now online gaming was all about the unimpeded flow of goods and services – especially across the EU. The industry tried hard to convince the EU and the European Commission to take a one-market approach to online gaming. That is, if you were based in an EU member state and offering online gaming services, other nations had to respect that and allow you to offer them. In addition to opening up markets, there was a significant regulatory advantage for operators in a one-market system as well. Compliance is expensive. And maintaining one infrastructure to comply with one set of regulations is far easier than trying to comply with several different sets of regulations. For a while, this one-market strategy appeared to have some legs. The U.K. adopted online gaming legislation that recognized and allowed licensed operators from other EU member states (and certain other areas) to offer their services to U.K. citizens. And Charles McCreevy, the European Commissioner for Internal Market and Services from 2004-2010, initiated a series of proceedings against countries that refused to open up their online gaming markets. But the rest of Europe refused to travel down that path. They fought EC efforts to create a one-market system of online gaming, maintaining it was their right to regulate gambling as they saw fit for a variety of reasons, including preventing problem gambling and fighting crime. And there were never enough votes to pursue EU legislation that would harmonize gaming rules. A series of ECJ rulings reinforced the right of EU member states to regulate online gaming for the purposes of public policy, public security and public health – though they had to be able to demonstrate that any restrictions met these criteria. And the one-market dream for online gaming began its death spiral, ultimately punctuated by the departure of McCreevy in 2010. IGAMING JURISDICTIONS OVERVIEW