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Will Real Madrid lose their Gibraltar bwin shirts?
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by PANORAMA reporter
A Spanish court has ruled that any kind of offering of online gaming without a Spanish licence is illegal. The issue arises if Real Madrid football club will lose its lucrative sponsorship from bwin.
bwin states that it is licensed by the Government of Gibraltar and regulated by the Gibraltar Gambling Commissioner.
The ruling is from the Spanish Mercantile Court, stating that any type of offering of games of chance or betting, including online, without a licence is illegal. The decision taken by the Court comes about as the result of a series of legal actions brought by Spanish gambling interests on the grounds of unfair competition vis-ŕ-vis a series of operators that offer games of chance and betting via the internet in Spain.
The ruling states that “any offering of gaming or betting activity that has not been granted a prior administrative authorization is, indisputably, prohibited”
The Court states that any offering and marketing of games of chance and betting carried out through remote means and, specifically, the internet, both before and after the entry into force on the 29th May 2011 of Law 13/2011 on Gaming are illegal, since they have been developed breaching current prohibitions and without the relevant licences granted in Spain.
This ruling is part of a series of legal actions against a number of online gaming and betting operators that have been offering their activities from tax havens, impervious to the Spanish Tax authorities, without licences, without player protection and without paying taxes in Spain, without generating employment and harming those entities, which operate or foresee to start operating lawfully in Spain with their illegal competition. This situation has been explicitly acknowledged by the Spanish Government before Parliament and the EU Commission.
bwin was founded in the year 1999 under the name of Simon Bold (Gibraltar) Ltd. –The company was taken over in its entirety in 2001 by the Vienna-based, publicly listed company bwin Interactive Entertainment AG. Following the merger with PartyGaming Plc in March 2011, the company is now part of the bwin.party group. The ultimate group parent company is bwin.party digital entertainment plc, a company registered in Gibraltar and listed on the London stock exchange.
Questions are now being asked if the sponsorship deal with Real Madrid will be affected. A report in Spain draws attention to bwin and the Real Madrid deal. The company paid 23 million euros in 2009 for its shirt sponsorship. "Now the agreement is in danger," it is being said.
Obviously other internet gaming companies might also be affected.
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