It has been revealed that a draft EU submission concerning the future of the online Spanish gaming law is proposing measures that are set to dictate provisions for operators wishing to offer their gaming services to the Spanish market.
On submission to Parliament, the draft law was accompanied by a memoir analysing and justifying collectively all the measures that are set to be introduced by late 2011 or early 2012. This memoir has now effectively set in motion plans to grant a total of just five gaming and betting licences through an exclusive public tender process that is expected to receive 10 operator bids. The draft law clarifies that licences, which will include lotteries, bets, raffles and competition services, from any other country (even from the EU) will not be valid in Spain.
With a new report indicating the grey online market to be currently worth between €210m and €250m, interested parties are waiting to see how the conditions of the public tender will look in practice and how the Spanish Government will interpret their priorities and preferences as to the type of operators who shall be granted with the licences.
Gaming partner at ECIJA, Xavier Munoz Bellvehi, who revealed the licence restrictions, will be chairing Online Gaming in Spain - A Regulatory Update, a conference in Madrid taking place on April 18. Delegates can join the international community as they tune into the perspectives of regulators and key industry representatives who will be openly discussing and offering tangible working solutions on the implications of the official text and ancillary documents, analysing for the audience what these will mean in practice.
