This month has seen a spate of online casino news items

Yesterday seems to have been an unusual day in terms of online casino news items, in that several of our major online casino operators appear to have been featured. First of all there was good news for William Hill and their prospective partners in the proposed takeover of Sportingbet, GVC Holdings, because the Take-over Panel have given them a further three weeks to complete negotiations in a deal expected to be in the region of £350 million. Not such good news is the reported arrest of Norbet Teufelberger, the co-chief executive of Bwin party by Belgian police who want to question him about why Bwin party are continuing to take online casino bets from Belgian gamblers, in spite of the fact that two of their online casino sites are currently unlicensed in Belgium. Apparently two of Bwin party’s rivals in Belgium, PokerStars and Unibet have both been granted online gaming licenses in Belgium, but Bwin party remains on a list of unlicensed online casino operators following the rejection of their appeal in June. Some online casino games gamblers may remember that Party Gaming had similar problems in America in 2006 as a result of their new online casino gaming laws, after which they decided to concentrate their efforts on the European online gaming market.  Unfortunately Belgium is one of several European countries which have been criticised by the European Commission for failing to relax their online casino gaming laws, so there is still a significant problem for many of the online casino operators in parts of Europe. Another well known betting operator, Betfair is also suffering in the European market, this time in Germany. Betfair is a betting exchange operation rather than a traditional bookmaker and has been in negotiations with the German tax authorities since they introduced a new 5% tax in July this year to gain exemption from the new tax. They have now decided to withdraw from the German market altogether to avoid building up a large tax liabilty should they lose their appeal.