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The regulated Spanish market will now go live on the morning of 5 June after stakeholders requested the launch be pushed back beyond the weekend to ensure a smooth transition from dot.com to dot.es platforms.
The launch was scheduled for midnight on Friday 1 June, when the country’s first online gaming licences are due to be issued.
However, the Spanish regulator today granted operators’ request that the moratorium for dot.com sites to continue operating in the market be extended until 9:00 on 5 June, according to local poker news website Poker-Red.
This followed a letter from Spanish online gaming association JDigital on behalf of operators, suppliers and service providers that this be delayed beyond the weekend to “avoid additional complications already implicit in the online launch of new products or new specifications.”
JDigital argued that launching on one of the busiest days of the week and when technical services in various jurisdictions were often scaled back increased the risk of problems that would dent consumer confidence “and seriously affect the transition to the regulated market.
“Good industry practices dictate that this type of technical project should be scheduled for a weekday and first thing in the morning, when technical responses are greater and user volumes and activity more manageable.”
Yesterday saw 888, the last of the London-listed operators with a significant Spanish-facing business, pay €8.7m to settle the Spanish government’s last-minute demand for extra taxes back-dated to 1 January 2009 under retroactively applied 1966 and 1977 land-based gaming laws. With bwin.party, Sportingbet and Betfair settling last week, Spanish authorities’ last-minute tax grab has netted it €68.9m from London-listed operators alone.
PokerStars and bet365 are also understood to have paid large settlements to clear away any potential impediment to the issue of their licences, but as privately owned companies, neither is under any obligation to disclose their liability.
The austerity driven tax-grab from the Spanish tax office came less than three weeks before the country’s regulator was due to issue the country’s first online gaming licences covering the offer of sports betting and casino table games, including poker. Betting exchanges, in-play, slots and bingo were not however included in the first round of licensing.
