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A total of 196 players took to the felts in San Jose, California for Day 1B of the ’s () Bay 101 Shooting Star tournament. Eugene Katchalov came out on top after the second starting day, earning a $10,000 cash bonus.
Katchalov finished with 131,500 chips, which will be the third largest stack after the survivors of Day 1A and Day 1B are combined for Day 2. When the cards hit the air today in the West Coast casino, 126 players will be seated. Overall, the tournament drew 333 entrants, down 15% from last year’s tally of 391. In 2009, took second to Steve Brecher and heading into Day 2, another female leads the way, Vanna Tea.
Shooting Stars, who have $5,000 bounties on their heads, doubled up left and right to close play on Tuesday at Bay 101. Poker front man was all-in with A-J of diamonds and up against pocket kings, but flopped one jack and turned trips to advance to Day 2. Lederer will have a stack of 20,600 chips when play resumes, the 109th largest tally.
Also doubling up late in the day was 2007 () Main Event champion Jerry Yang, whose 74,300 chips make up the 27th largest stack. Yang is fresh off an Elite Eight appearance in the National Heads-Up Poker Championship, where he fell to eventual champion .
Not as fortunate was 2008 WSOP Europe Main Event winner , whose pocket fours could not hold up against the A-K of Tyler Cornell. When the smoke cleared, Cornell made a Broadway straight to collect Juanda’s $5,000 bounty and autographed Shooting Star shirt.
Also falling short on Day 1B was Victory Poker pro , who was all-in pre-flop with a wired pair of nines against the pocket kings of Betfair pro Sorel “Imper1um” Mizzi and the A-3 of another player. The board ran out J-8-8-5-3, ultimately giving Mizzi a king-high flush, and Esfandiari was relegated to the rails. “The Magician” had tripled up earlier in the day with pocket kings against A-K and pocket nines. Meanwhile, Mizzi busted two players in the hand and owns the ninth largest chip stack entering Day 2.
UB.com pro and 11-time bracelet winner was all-in on a flop of J-5-3 with two spades holding A-Q of spades for the nut flush draw and two overcards. His opponent held 4-5 for a pair. The turn came a queen, saving the day for “The Poker Brat,” and a harmless nine fell on the river. Hellmuth ended the day with a stack of 62,800 chips, the 42nd largest tally in the WPT tournament. His talented company at Table 22 on Wednesday will include , Faraz “The-Toilet” Jaka, Justin “Boosted J” Smith, and Corwin “mig.com” Mackey. Talk about a tough draw.
Here are the top 10 chip stacks in the WPT Bay 101 Shooting Star event as play enters Day 2:
1. Vanna Tea – 143,900
2. Greg “FBT” Mueller – 132,800
3. Eugene Katchalov – 131,500
4. Timothy McDermott – 118,100
5. Grantland Hillman – 115,100
6. David Sands – 106,900
7. Oddie Dardon – 105,500
8. – 99,900
9. Sorel “Imper1um” Mizzi – 97,600
10. Yevgeniy “Jovial Gent” Timoshenko – 97,600
The winner of the event will take home an $878,000 grand prize, with the top 36 players finishing in the money. Here are the payouts for the six-handed feature table:
1st Place: $878,500
2nd Place: $521,200
3rd Place: $292,800
4th Place: $234,300
5th Place: $175,700
6th Place: $117,000
Other notable names appearing in the top 50 after two starting days include:
13. – 93,100
15. Hasan Habib – 89,700
16. Nick Schulman – 88,100
18. – 84,800
19. Chris “Fox” Wallace – 84,100
26. “Miami” John Cernuto – 76,700
27. Jerry Yang – 74,300
30. Phil Laak – 72,700
35. Chau Giang – 68,500
41. Steve “gboro780” Gross – 64,200
42. Phil Hellmuth – 62,800
45. Matt “All In At 420” Stout – 61,000
47. Brandon Cantu – 58,100
The WPT Bay 101 Shooting Star tournament will crown a champion on Friday. Stay tuned to Poker News Daily for the latest WPT results.
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Eight players remain in the 2010 National Heads-Up Poker Championship, which will begin airing on NBC on April 18th at Noon ET. Among the survivors are poker veterans and .
Duke faced off against 2007 National Heads-Up Poker Championship winner Paul Wasicka in the round of 16. The seesaw match featured the short stack doubling up time after time. Finally, Duke shoved with A-10 pre-flop and Wasicka made the call with pocket aces. The flop came A-2-J, giving Wasicka what seemed like an insurmountable lead. However, Duke spiked a queen on the turn and king on the river to make a runner-runner Broadway straight and double through.
Coverage found on PokerNews described the scene during Duke’s miracle double-up: “The gallery went absolutely berserk. Duke, standing over the table, held her hands up to her face in utter disbelief. She then walked to Wasicka’s side of the table and whispered something in his ear before re-taking her seat.” Wasicka was the runner-up to in the 2006 Main Event, earning $6.1 million.
The hand crippled Wasicka, who promptly doubled with A-9 against Duke’s K-10. In the final hand of the match, Wasicka committed his chips with pocket jacks and Duke made the call with a meager 8-5 of diamonds. The flop came 8-2-7, giving Duke top pair, and a five on the turn improved the UB.com pro and Poker News Daily Guest Columnist to two pair. Wasicka needed a two, seven, or jack on the river to stave off elimination, but a nine fell and Wasicka was ousted. Next up for Duke is 2007 (WSOP) Main Event champion Jerry Yang, whose supporters had a less-than-cordial run-in with earlier in the day.
Brunson’s miracle run continued. In 2008, Brunson defeated Annette “” Obrestad two matches to none in a prelude to the WSOP Europe Main Event. In the Sweet 16, the two Caesars Cup participants squared off once again. They sat at the feature table and Brunson shoved all-in on a flop reading 7-5-J. Obrestad held 6-4 for an open-ended straight draw, while Brunson flipped up J-5 for two pair. The turn was a king, leaving Obrestad needing to hit a straight on the river to avoid doubling up the 10-time bracelet winner. However, a jack hit, giving Brunson a boat and a critical double-up.
Obrestad, the 2007 WSOP Europe Main Event champion, then shoved pre-flop with Q-5 of hearts for her remaining stack. Brunson, who underwent extensive dental surgery two days after the Super Bowl, woke up with A-8, which held on for the win. Brunson’s Elite Eight opponent is 2008 WSOP Main Event November Nine member , who bested high-stakes cash game pro Eli Elezra in the round of 16. Phillips’ National Heads-Up Poker Championship opponents have included and Kara Scott.
Eight-time bracelet winner will face off against 2008 WSOP Main Event winner in the round of eight. Seidel bested another former World Champion to punch his ticket to the Elite Eight, . Seidel doubled up after flopping a straight with Q-J against Moneymaker’s K-2. The flop came 9-10-K, giving Seidel the nuts, and a running 6-9 didn’t help matters for Moneymaker. The former Tennessee accountant was then all-in with 10-8 of diamonds against Seidel’s A-Q. The board came 3-5-7-3-7 and Seidel’s two pair with an ace kicker scooped the pot and sent Moneymaker packing.
The winners of the clubs and spades brackets will face off against each other in the Final Four. Similarly, the survivors of the hearts and diamonds brackets will play each other. Here is how the field shapes up:
Clubs Bracket
Erik Seidel vs Peter Eastgate
Spades Bracket
vs Jason Mercier
Hearts Bracket
Dennis Phillips vs Doyle Brunson
Diamonds Bracket
Jerry Yang vs Annie Duke
A winner will be determined today. The action kicks off at 11:00am PT from Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. Stay tuned to Poker News Daily for the latest National Heads-Up Poker Championship coverage.
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02 28th, 2010
But sitting among the leaders on the event’s third day, that’s not at the forefront of his mind.
“The thing is, it’s a lifetime thing,” said 35-year-old Kid Poker. “It’s not really a pressing thing.”
The pressing business was for both he and Ivey to get past 2006 WSOP Main Event champ Jamie Gold, who edged out him for the top spot with that single $12 million win four years ago.
But when Negreanu passed Gold finishing second at the WSOP Europe main event this past September and Ivey’s November Nine appearance pushed him even further ahead, two of poker’s best were left to spend the rest of their careers vying for top spot.
The only problem is, continuing to collect big scores from tournaments isn’t getting easier.
Negreanu says everybody is getting better and every year, fresh faced kids rising from the online ranks continue to display an unmatched fundamental talent for the game.
He says he’s been forced to change his game, unlike another player named Phil, who still sits behind Gold in fourth on the all-time list with a little more than $11 million in earnings.
“The biggest difference with Phil Hellmuth and I is that I watch the way the game changes and I understand I need to tweak my game in order to compete,” he said. “He thinks if he brushes his teeth, does yoga and eats right he’s just going to win.
“He really thinks you just need to have a positive attitude. You just need to learn how to play poker better.”
The way Negreanu sees it, the old-school way just isn’t going to cut it anymore.
“Years ago there was a way to play. It was easy and it worked,” he said. “These young kids have found a way to exploit it. It’s like a bacteria mutating to become resistant to the medication you’ve been giving it. You have to find a way to attack the problem.
“There are weaknesses in every strategy to some degree. So I go after their weaknesses and the way they perceive me, which opens up a whole new group of opportunities that I can use against them.”
His willingness to adapt is where he finds the consistency.
“Right now I’m getting back to basics,” he said. “Which is paying attention to a lot of physical tells that I’m seeing in the young guys. Paying attention to who is the wild man, what they’re doing and that sort of thing.
“In the old days I didn’t even have to do as much of that, because people just played the game so fundamentally poorly.”
But as he goes about trying to make poker history as one of the leaders in L.A. Sunday afternoon with an eye on the big screen inside Commerce and the Canadian Olympic Hockey Team Winning gold on home soil to make hockey history, Negreanu sounds ready for business.
“It takes a lot of concentration. It’s not easy anymore,” he said. “It’s not like I can just sit there and wait for them to make mistakes like we used to.”
The World Poker Tour’s L.A. Poker Classic continues through March 4. For comprehensive coverage, tune in to PokerListings’ and .
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The landscape of the European online poker and casino gaming world continues to get murkier as two recent opinions announced today from the European Court of Justice question the legalities of the Austrian and Swedish gaming laws.
In the first opinion, Advocate General Jan Mazak ruled on a case regarding Ernst Engelmann, a German citizen who operates two online casinos in Austria. Engelmann was found guilty of unlawfully organizing games of chance in Austria and the case was appealed to the regional court of Linz, Austria. This regional court sought the opinion of the ECJ on three points of Austrian gaming laws and whether they violated the European Union treaty that allows for freedom of trade across national boundaries.
AG Mazak, after reviewing the case history, ruled on the three points that the regional court had requested clarification for. AG Mazak stated that the requirement that companies must have their company physically located in Austria involves a restriction on freedom of establishment and is a violation of the EU treaty. Mazak ruled that this direct discrimination prohibits companies with their seat in another Member State from being holders of a license to operate a casino.
Part of the reason for that segment of the Austrian law – that Austria was looking to protect its citizens through having the gaming operations located in the country and bound by its laws – was unfounded in Mazak’s opinion. AG Mazak ruled that companies that are a part of the EU are bound by the laws of the EU treaty. In his decision, AG Mazak stated, “In fact, any undertaking established in a Member State can be supervised and penalties imposed on it, regardless of the place of residence of its managers.” Thus, AG Mazak ruled against the location of operations argument used by the Austrian government.
In the other opinion, Advocate General Yves Bot was asked by the Stockholm Court of Appeals to rule on the case of two editors of national newspapers. Otto Sjöberg and Anders Gerdin were the editors-in-chief and publishers of two Swedish newspapers who accepted advertising from gaming companies located outside of Sweden. In late 2003 and 2004, they published advertisements for lotteries offered on such gaming sites as Expekt, , and Centrebet, all which are established in Malta and the United Kingdom. They were convicted of violating the Swedish gaming laws through promotion of companies not located in Sweden and were fined SEK 1000 (approximately $137).
While AG Bot opinion stated that the punishment for the violation was appropriate as to the Swedish law, he did question the decision in the Swedish courts. At issue is a question of discrimination, according to AG Bot. In his opinion, AG Bot stated, “In the present case, although Swedish legislation prohibits, without distinction, the promotion of gambling organized abroad and the promotion of gambling organized in Sweden without a license, the penalties laid down for infringement of that prohibition are different. Thus, whereas penalties of a fine and imprisonment for up to six months are laid down for persons who advertise gaming organized abroad, those who advertise gaming organized in Sweden without a license do not incur equivalent criminal penalties, but only administrative penalties.”
The two opinions laid out by AGs Mazak and Bot are not binding, however. They are simply the AGs opinions and must go in front of the full European Court of Justice before a decision is rendered on either case. At this time, there has been no date set for a final decision on the two cases.
The European Betting and Gaming Association, which has been battling the movement towards the nationalization of online gaming in Europe, has hailed the opinions of the two Advocates General as potentially groundbreaking in the online gaming industry. Sigrid Ligné, the Secretary General of the EGBA, was especially pleased with the Austrian ruling when she said, “(With AG Mazak’s opinion) In this context, there is no acceptable justification to prevent reputable European competitors from offering online poker and casino games to Austrian players.”
Ligné appealed to free market economic theory when she said about the Swedish opinion, “It is remarkable that leading national newspapers, which are financed through and very much dependent on the sale of advertising, are unfairly deprived of substantial sources of revenue.” Ligné also noted that the two Swedish companies who conduct the country’s online gaming operations, Svenska Spel and ATG, advertise heavily inside Swedish borders and also use other European Union Member States in advertising on television to draw customers.
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Bluff Europe’s Card Gang are back this week with another fantastic value tournament with some very nice prizes to be won.
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02 21st, 2010
Rumored to be Swede Victor Blom, Isildur1 disappeared from the high-stakes games after he went on a devastating multi-million dollar downswing in late 2009.
He returned with a vengeance this week with huge matches against Justin Bonomo and Brian Townsend.
With all the attention focused on Isildur1 there were a few poker stories that were nearly forgotten. Fortunately, as part of our ongoing Poker News in Brief feature we’ve compiled a list below.
This week we’ll look at another winner on the UKIPT, a notable player winning at the LAPC, the record-breaking sale of a poker domain and more.
Dutch Student Wins UKIPT Manchester
Twenty-one-year-old Dutch student Joeri Zandvliet outlasted 517 players to win the inaugural UK & Ireland Poker Tour Manchester event this week.
The final table was dominated by residents of the UK with only Zandvliet and Julian Hasse of Germany coming from Europe.
Zandvliet beat Newcastle native Jack Ellwood heads-up to claim the
According to a source close to Poker, the site’s pros are able to play in any competitor’s open event. The squad’s ability to enter this weekend’s North American Poker Tour (NAPT) Main Event appeared to be in doubt.
Whether members of Team Full Tilt or the site’s Red Pros will turn out to the $5,000 buy-in NAPT feature tournament remains to be seen. However, contrary to an , pros of Full Tilt are apparently more than welcome to buy into PokerStars-sponsored events. A source close to the world’s second largest online poker site told Poker News Daily, “Any Full Tilt pro, Red or member of Team Full Tilt, can play in any competitor’s open event.”
Currently, Full Tilt sponsored pro Roberto Romanello is second in chips at the PokerStars European Poker Tour (EPT) Copenhagen event with 39 players remaining. Players like and , both members of Team Full Tilt, competed in last year’s () Europe Main Event, which is title sponsored by Betfair. In 2008, pro took the prestigious tournament down for £868,000.
Full Tilt Poker pros turned out in droves to the 2010 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure Main Event in the Bahamas last month. Full Tilt’s Peter “Nordberg” Feldman took 35th in the $10,000 buy-in Main Event, while Eric “E-Fro” Froehlich finished in 41st. Full Tilt sponsored pro and reigning National Heads-Up Poker Championship winner landed in the 49th spot on the leaderboard and 2009 WSOP Main Event November Nine member and Team Full Tilt pro Phil Ivey also cracked the top 100.
An article posted by ESPN columnist Gary Wise earlier this week asserted, “Now we’re hearing word that you won’t be seeing Red Pros at the North American Poker Tour stop at the Venetian this weekend.” Wise explained the dangerous precedent that could be set by Full Tilt instructing its pros not to compete in the NAPT: “By pulling their pros from the NAPT, FTP is playing a dangerous game with the one industry entity that can outspend them… Once FTP has poked the bear, does the bear really have a reason to not start poking back?”
Also in question is whether Full Tilt Poker pros will play in the $25,000 NAPT High Roller Bounty Shootout, which will receive three hours of coverage on ESPN2 beginning on April 16th. Meanwhile, Full Tilt Poker pro took down the Premier League IV title last night, defeating Luke “Full_Flush” Schwartz, and Full Tilt pro Roland de Wolfe also competed. Players from PartyPoker, PokerStars, and UB.com all appeared in the Premier League, which airs throughout Europe and is organized by Matchroom Sport.
Complicating the puzzle even further is the running of the () Celebrity Invitational on Saturday and Sunday, which will compete head-to-head with the NAPT Main Event in nearby Las Vegas. According to WPT officials, Full Tilt pros , Andy Bloch, David “The Dragon” Pham, , , and Bill Edler are all confirmed to play in the invite-only event, meaning that they likely won’t be making an appearance at the NAPT feature tournament.
Full Tilt received quite a bit of heat for only using its pros on the poker game show “Face the Ace,” which struggled mightily in the ratings. Meanwhile, the Full Tilt backed “Poker After Dark,” which airs on NBC, features a bevy of pros from other brands. Full Tilt also sponsors the WPT on Fox Sports Net.
Team Full Tilt member was in Los Angeles shooting commercials for the online poker site and attending a Lakers game, according to his Twitter account. Stay tuned to Poker News Daily for the latest NAPT coverage.
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02 16th, 2010
In breaking news from Bristol, ESPN2 will carry the inaugural season of the sponsored North American Poker Tour (NAPT). The festivities will kick off on April 19th on the cable station with the Venetian $25,000 High Roller Bounty Shootout.
ESPN’s family of channels already brings many of today’s popular poker programming to life. As it currently stands, ESPN owns the coverage rights for the annual () through April 2018. According to a WSOP press release distributed in August, the WSOP attracts a total audience of 82 million U.S. viewers each year. Poker airs on a variety of ESPN stations, including ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN Classic, ESPN.com, ESPN360.com, ESPN Mobile TV, and non-U.S. ESPN outlets. An extension was forged in August and ESPN has broadcasted the spectacle since 2003.
A total of 16 hours of NAPT coverage will begin airing on ESPN2 on April 19th. ESPN’s Coordinating Producer, Jamie Horowitz, told the press, “We’re very excited to bring the North American Poker Tour to ESPN. Our fans like big names and big stakes - the NAPT will have both in excess.” Fans of poker are in the midst of watching the 2009 WSOP Europe Main Event unfold on ESPN2. Sunday night featured the fifth, sixth, and seventh hour-long episodes, with two more slated to hit television airwaves on February 28th. The sixth episode brought the action down to nine players at London’s Casino at the Empire.
The kickoff NAPT Main Event at the Venetian begins on February 20th. Part of the festivities include a special made-for-television $25,000 High Roller Bounty Shootout, which features 36 of poker’s top names battling it out for poker supremacy. Each player at the final table will take home $50,000, while the remaining prize pool less the $5,000 bounties will be awarded entirely to the winner. In addition, PokerStars is dishing out $100,000 of its own money to the player who records the most knockouts. Team PokerStars Pro front man and “PokerStars Million Dollar Challenge” host was the Shootout’s first confirmed participant.
“Dancing with the Stars” competitor and model Joanna Krupa will serve as the host of the NAPT on ESPN2. Seven airdates have been announced, with NAPT coverage appearing on the following Monday nights:
April 19th: Venetian $25,000 High Roller Bounty Shootout: 9:00pm to 11:00pm ET
April 26th: Venetian $25,000 High Roller Bounty Shootout: 9:00pm ET
April 26th: Venetian $5,000 Main Event: 10:00pm ET
May 3rd: Mohegan Sun Shootout: 9:00pm to 11:00pm ET
May 10th: Mohegan Sun Shootout: 9:00pm ET
May 10th: Mohegan Sun $5,000 Main Event: 10:00pm ET
May 17th: PokerStars Caribbean Adventure $25,000 High Roller: 9:00pm to 11:00pm ET
“Inside Deal,” which features hosts Laura Lane and Foxwoods sponsored pro , anchors ESPN’s poker content in the online space. The 2010 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure (PCA) was the first stop on Season 1 of the NAPT, which debuts on U.S. soil at the Venetian on Saturday. On April 7th, PokerStars officials will head to the forests of Connecticut, where NAPT Mohegan Sun will pan out.
The 2010 PCA Main Event featured Harrison Gimbel trump a record field of 1,529 players en route to a $2.2 million first place prize. American William Reynolds captured victory in the $25,000 PCA High Roller event, which airs on May 17th on ESPN2; his victory was worth $576,000. Others who made the top 15 included Sandra Naujoks, 2009 WSOP Main Event winner , 2004 WSOP Main Event champ , and Isaac “westmenloAA” Baron.
New poker programming can be seen across a spectrum of channels including GSN (“High Stakes Poker”), Fox Sports Net (“Poker2Nite” and the ), and NBC (“Poker After Dark”).
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02 16th, 2010
Matchroom Sport, the producer, promoter, and distributor of the .com Premier League IV, which is underway right now at the M Casino in Las Vegas, won the Rob Gardner Award for Innovation at the 2009 European Poker Awards.
Players and industry experts from across Europe submitted their ballots for eight different categories, with the top five vote-getters for each award advancing to the final judging. A panel of eight judges then met during the Euro Finals of Poker at the Aviation Club de France (ACF) to determine the winners (except for the Lifetime Achievement Award, which was decided by the original voting). The winners were announced and presented with their gold trophies at a dinner banquet at the ACF.
Matchroom Sport is one of the preeminent producers of televised sports programming, concentrating primarily on the European market. Besides poker, Matchroom Sport also develops shows for boxing, darts, snooker, billiards, fishing, golf, and bowling. In addition to the increasingly popular PartyPoker.com Premier League, Matchroom Sport has also produced the Million Dollar Challenge, the PartyPoker.com World Open, and the PKR Heads-Up Grand Slam.
“We are absolutely thrilled to have won the award for innovation at the European Poker Awards,” said Matchroom Sport’s Managing Director Eddie Hearn in a press release. “The news broke as we began the first heat of the PartyPoker.com Premier League Poker IV here in Las Vegas and it gave the team a real lift. We always feel we have a responsibility to grow the game and our innovative formats combined with our global distribution will hopefully help the game go from strength to strength.”
There were only two other nominees for the Rob Gardner Award for Innovation: Gene Gioa, creator of RealDealPoker.com, and Antanas “Tony G” Guoga, lead man of PokerNews.com, who created ChipMeUp. RealDealPoker.com, scheduled to launch in March, is a unique online poker room which uses real decks of cards which are scrambled and shuffled by the site’s automated “Cut N’ Shuffle” system. The order of the cards in the deck are captured on video and sent to a “Deck Matrix” system, which presents the deal to the online players. ChipMeUp is a poker staking community where players can raise funds to play in tournaments and investors can provide players with a portion of their buy-in in hopes of earning a return.
Tony G, who is currently competing in the PartyPoker.com Premier League, said, “If anyone was going to beat me to this award then it deserves to be Eddie and his team at Matchroom. They produce the best poker shows in the world and are always trying to raise the bar. The PartyPoker.com Premier League is my favorite tournament in poker and is seen by more countries than any other show in the world.”
Other winners at the 2009 European Poker Awards included Russia’s for Player of the Year, Italy/Australia’s for Outstanding Tournament Performance, Finland’s for Internet Player of the Year, and Bruno Fitoussi for Lifetime Achievement.
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European gambling companies received some positive comments from the new European Internal Market Commissioner Michel Barnier this week. Speaking for the first time since taking over the role in January, Barnier told the European Parliament Thursday that last year’s /Santa Casa ruling by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has little bearing on the Commission’s approach to infringement procedures against member states.
In September, Santa Casa da Misericórdia de Lisboa claimed that bwin´s sponsorship agreement with the Portuguese professional football league and accompanying advertising activities were illegal because of Santa Casa’s monopoly in providing on and offline lottery and betting services in Portugal. Under Portuguese law, Santa Casa was exclusively entitled to run lotteries and sports betting in the country. In 2003 that exclusive right was extended to include games offered by electronic means, in particular the internet, essentially prohibiting all other operators from offering online gaming services in Portugal.
The ECJ ruled that the Portuguese monopoly on the Internet may comply with Community law under certain conditions, but restrictions imposed by a Member State “must be suitable for achieving the objective or objectives invoked by the Member State concerned, and they must not go beyond what is necessary in order to achieve those objectives. Lastly, in any event, those restrictions must be applied without discrimination.”
Barnier told parliamentarians Thursday that the Santa Casa ruling was based on considerations specific to Portugal and its national monopoly operator, Santa Casa da Misericórdia de Lisboa. The Commission will therefore continue to examine the compliance of national legislation with European Union law on a case-by-case basis.
The European Gaming and Betting Association (EGBA), which represents Europe’s leading regulated operators, voiced its strong support for the Commissioner and his plans to engage in a broad discussion with stakeholders. The EGBA particularly welcomed the prospect of a Commission Green Paper on gambling, a document intended to stimulate debate and launch a process of consultation directed toward changing a law. The Association believes the move could offer a real opportunity to test the interest and support of the European Parliament and Member States for future European Union (EU) synchronization in the sector.
Said EGBA Secretary General, Sigrid Ligné: “With several Member States currently reforming their gaming and betting legislation, this is an important confirmation that the Commission will not stand by while Member States introduce restrictions that go against fundamental principles of the EU.”
Barnier took over the role of Internal Market Commissioner in January from Charlie McCreevy, a proponent of EU harmonization in the gaming sector who was criticized during his tenure by the gambling industry for failing to follow through on infringement procedures against member states with restrictive gaming legislations.
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