Spanish Gambling Group Codere Fights Against Foreign Competition

Codere, the renowned gambling group operating, among others, popular online casinos in Spain, venturing into legal battles against foreign competition.

The goal behind Codere’s legal suits is clear: the company want to retain its position as one of the leaders on the home market following a change in Spanish gambling laws and subsequent liberalization of the online gambling market.

The following prominent gambling operators were targeted by Codere’s legal suits: online poker mega-monster Poker Stars, Austrian gambling group Bwin and renowned sports betting operator Sportingbet.

The main argument behind Codere’s actions is that gambling operators, which have already accessed the Spanish online gambling market prior to liberalization, have gained a very unfair competitive advantage over Codere, which was a land-based gambling group and was forced to come up with plans for online gambling.

Since the liberalization of the market, Codere is allowed to compete against the big boys, the company is looking for a common starting ground. Spain gambling news reports that Codere is looking to oblige pre-liberalization times operators to start from scratch and possible even pay some kind of delayed retribution.

Codere’s legal team can already boast some positive outcomes: a Madrid court ruled to require Spanish ISPs to ban access to Miapuesta website of Sportingbet, and could even disrupt the sportsbooks financial operations.

Sportingbet hasn’t lost the war yet, but had to fork over EUR 2 million as a preliminary deposit to somehow soften the injunction and carry on with the legal debate.

Poker Stars is doing much better in withstanding Codere’s pressure: a Barcelona court has declined Codere’s advancements, but the Spanish operator could still try its luck appealing the decision.