Casino City's iGaming Pocket Directory - 2014 Edition

127 Sponsored by Visit iGamingPocketDirectory.com for more information. JURISDICTIONS UNITED K NGDOM The online gaming regulatory framework in Europe didn’t change much in 2013. But 2014 looks like a year where significant change could be in the works. France, Spain, Italy, Denmark, and Belgium are all operating under country-specific regulations. France, Spain, and Italy ring-fence their players. Denmark and Belgium do not. Those regulations are not likely to change in 2014, even in France, where operators have been intensely lobbying for changes ranging from tax relief to pooling player liquidity. Two French online poker rooms, Barriere and Partouche, pulled out of the market citing the soft economy and a poor tax structure. And French operators who were hoping to build liquidity by sharing player pools with Italy and Spain had their dreams dashed by France’s parliament, which nixed the idea. The Spanish regulatory body, DGOJ, and the Italian regulatory body, AAMS, could still negotiate a liquidity deal between Spain and Italy. The Netherlands is working on its own set of regulations that will allow a regulated online gaming market to open up within the country in 2015. And Playtech has signed a major deal with Holland Casino, which operates the brick-and-mortar casinos in the Netherlands, to supply it with online gaming software. But the biggest change in the industry is likely to come in the UK, where a proposed point of consumption tax could change the way business is done in online gambling’s most competitive market. UNITED KINGDOM & EUROPE