William Hill, Sportingbet and Stanleybet won a landmark judgment in Europe’s highest court today, as the CJEU deemed Greece’s OPAP gambling monopoly to be operating contrary to EU law.
The court said that Greece, which recently drafted legislation to hand exclusive online rights to OPAP, must either reform the monopoly and subject it to stricter controls or open the market to competition by allowing other companies to apply for licences in a fair and transparent manner.
The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), which allows gambling monopolies in the EU if they are set up to limit gambling and gambling-related crime in the public interest, ruled that OPAP was currently flouting these rules.
Sigrid Ligné, secretary general of industry representative body the European Gaming and Betting Association, said: “Given the factual set up of OPAP’s monopoly…we hardly expect effective control to be implemented in the future. Therefore, Greece should follow the Court’s clear advice to liberalise the market.”
The CJEU’s ruliing detailed OPAP’s advertising privileges, the lack of individual customer betting limits and its expansion in Greece and Cyprus, seen by the court as inconsistent with its purported monopoly objectives of providing enhanced consumer protection and combatting criminality.
The CJEU was ruling in the joined cases brought by Stanleybet (2004) and Sportingbet and William Hill (2007) after Greek authorities rejected their applications for gambling licences. The operators challenged that the national court’s ruling broke EU rules safeguarding their right to offer services in Greece from another Member State, as enshrined in Articles 43 and 49 of the EC Treaty.
The ruling will be welcomed by pan-European online gambling operators which have in recent years found themselves on the receiving end of CJEU rulings in favour of state monopolies seeking to block them from entering national gambling markets across the European Economic Area.
bwin lost a landmark CJEU battle against Portuguese monopoly Santa Casa da Misericórdia de Lisboa in 2009, while the court also found in favour of Netherlands monopoly De Lotto against Betfair and Ladbrokes in 2010.
Article written by Stephen Carter
