GPWA Times Magazine - Issue 11 - January 2010

In September, Kentucky muscled its way onto theglobal stagewhen it tried to seize 141 online gambling domains, claiming theywere illegal gamblingdevices. The list of sites targeted was “developed by attorneys [conducting the investiga- tion] and are sites where people from Kentucky, using Kentucky addresses, were able to place bets,” Casino City was told by Jennifer Brislin, communications director for the Justice and Public Safety Cabinet, which filed the lawsuit on behalf of the government. The targeteddomains areheldbyamixofdomesticand interna- tional registrars, Brislinadded. Franklin County Circuit Judge Thomas Wingate ruledKentuckywaswithin its le- gal rights toseize thesedomains, andgave the targeted sites 30days to stop offering their services toKentucky residents. After Wingate’s ruling, Microgaming be- gan blocking all new player registrations from theU.S.Andeven though theseizure order was eventually blocked and over- turned by an appeals court the following year,Microgaminghasnot returned to the U.S. InOctober of 2008, we received the first ofmany troublingsignals thatEuropewas trending toward viewing online gambling as a state-by-state affair and not a single market. On October 14, French Advocate General Yves Bot sided with Portugal in thebwinLigacase. Inhisopinion,Botsaid Portugalhad the right to restrictgambling offerings to a sole operator if it did so in the interestofpreventing fraudandcrime. Bot also said thatPortugal didnotneed to explore less restrictive options to achieve the samegoal. Bot’s opinionwas nonbinding. But it was important becauseadvocategeneral opin- ionsareoftenusedasguides forEuropean Court of Justice rulings. It was also im- portant because it reflected the political positions of many European states and stood in stark contrast to the European Commission, whichhadbeenpushing for a singleonlinegamblingmarket. While Bot was advocating gambling mo- nopolies, Norway was moving toward prohibition. And in December, Norway’s parliament passed its own UIGEA. The measure banned financial transactions between residents of Norway and online gamblingoperators. Itwasalsoabig12months forAntiguaand Barbuda. As has already beenmentioned, at theendof 2007 theWTO ruled that the U.S. had topay them$21millionannually for closing their online gamblingmarket. In November of 2008, Antigua obtained the highly coveted “white list” status un- der the U.K. Gambling Act of 2005. The “white list” status allowed online gaming companies with Antiguan licenses to ad- vertise inBritain. The last year of the decade was a mixed bag for the online gambling industry. On the plus side of the ledger were positive developments in Denmark, Minnesota, Las Vegas andWashington, D.C. On the negative side of the ledger were the bwin Liga rulingandEuropeanParliament. In April, Denmark announced plans to deregulate its online gambling industry. Danske Spil had been the sole gambling provider inDenmark for60years.Online gambling companieswill have topay a li- censing fee to offer services inDenmark, but they’ll be able to compete directly withDanskeSpil. That same month, Minnesota tried to block online gambling sites from Min- nesota residents. TheMinnesotaDepart- mentofPublicSafetyAlcoholandGaming Division (AGED) asked 11 national and regional telephone and Internet Service Providers to prohibit Minnesota-based 20 Online Gaming Stories of the Decade