Betfair Furious Over the Proposed Greek Online Gambling Laws

After spending time and money assisting the government in creating new Greek gambling laws Betfair is displeased with the final result. The Greek politicians politely listened to Betfair’s proposals and did exactly the opposite of everything that the experienced gambling conglomerate proposed.

Greek Socialists instead came up with laws and regulations to govern online gambling quite different from the giant sportsbook’s views, and more in line with economic postulates of Karl Marx.

Betfair Sportsbook is not taking this lying down and has already presented the European Comission with a detailed explanation showing why the proposed Greek gambling laws cannot function in an open market.The commission is now reviewing the Greek proposals on gambling regulations. EC is scheduled to put forward an opinion in early July.

Martin Cruddace, Betfair’s legal director, told online gambling news in Greece, that after seeing the draft of the new laws, they identified several elements in direct contradiction with the EU law and general principles, and elements particularly discriminating against Betfair.

Betfair’s spokesperson had the following comments: “We have therefore asked the Commission to review the matter and engage with the Greek authorities with the aim of addressing the concerns raised in our complaint.”

The sportsbook’s complaint has 4 specific aspects:

• A blanket ban on betting exchanges – an area in which Betfair is both market leader and pioneer;
• The Greek insistence that licensees should establish a Greek corporate presence, and fell the full brunt of the Greek tax collectors;
• The provision in the draft requiring licensees to host their servers and payment processors within Greece;
• The demand that online customers must obtain a special player’s identity card.

Despite the draft still being with the EC, following opposition parties’ objections, in was recently withdrawn from the Greek parliament. Thus its future and that of the Greek gambling laws remains uncertain.