Rolling the dice in court

By Jim Brunsden - 30.09.2010 / 04:13 CET

In the absence of EU legislation on gambling, it often falls on the European Court of Justice to decide on the compatibility of national gambling laws.

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Fact file

Anxious authorities

The past decade has seen a number of high-profile arrests and fines by national authorities anxious to prevent foreign gambling companies from forcing their way onto national markets.

In 2001, Italy closed hundreds of shops that offered services provided by Stanleybet, a firm that provides ‘agents' – shops – with remote terminals on which international bets can be placed via servers based in the UK and Malta. A number of arrests were made. Similarly, there have been arrests and shop closures in Greece linked to Stanleybet's activities.

In 2006, the chief executives of Austrian online betting firm Bwin were arrested in France when they arrived at AS Monaco to announce a sponsorship deal with the football club. The two men, Manfred Bodner and Norbert Teufelberger, were released on bail. Despite recent reforms to the French gambling market, the investigation continues. Thomas Talos, Bwin's legal counsellor, believes the case will be dropped soon.

In 2007, Petter Nylander, at the time chief executive of online gambling firm Unibet, suffered a similar fate. He was arrested by Dutch police after France issued a European arrest warrant. This followed a complaint by Française des Jeux and Pari Mutuel Urbain, which at the time had a duopoly over sports betting in France. They argued that Unibet's marketing activities, such as sponsorship deals, impinged on their privileges. At the time, the European Commission said that “in our view somebody might have been arrested who is innocent under [EU] law”. Nylander was released on bail, but the investigation is continuing.

Bwin, the largest publicly listed online gambling operator on mainland EU, has run foul of a number of national authorities. The Portuguese authorities fined Bwin €74,500 for, in 2005, concluding a football sponsorship deal that they said breached a non-profit-making organisation's monopoly over sports betting. Bwin is currently facing litigation in Germany, Portugal and Slovenia linked to sponsorship deals and advertising.

There have also been instances in which national authorities have simply blocked people's access to online gambling websites.