Polish President Lech Kaczynski has implemented a clampdown on gambling in Poland which limits gambling to a few casinos and restricts the number of gaming machines in each casino. The first reading of additional measures banning online gambling is imminent and there are widespread fears that advertising and sponsorship from e-gaming companies will be curtailed.
The Wall Street Journal reports that sponsorship from e-gaming companies is worth an estimated PLN50m (USD18.2m) to Polish sport each year, including Unibet's USD4m title sponsorship of 1 Liga, the second league of Polish football, Bet-At-Home's and BetClick's USD3m shirt-sponsorship deals with leading football clubs Wisla Krakow and Lech Poznan.
Although sports sponsorship and sport betting advertising were specifically exempted under the main legislation recently passed, a ban on online operators through ISP blocks and banning of sponsorship and advertising is expected in the new draft provisions. This would have a serious overall adverse effect on sport finances in Poland, especially football.
The European Commission has worked towards a liberalized, but regulated online gaming regime in European countries with the objective of fostering competition and banning monopolistic practices, but a Europe-wide regulatory framework has become increasingly unlikely as each country has adopted its own regulatory measures and the European courts have upheld the rights of individual countries to maintain anti-competitive regimes in the name of consumer protection. Last September Bwin lost such a case against Portugal's state-controlled sports-betting monopoly.
A comprehensive report in our Intelligence Report series examining the new possibilities that offshore e-commerce open up for business, and analysing the offshore jurisdictions that have led the way in offering professional e-commerce regimes for international business, with a particular focus on e-gaming, is available in the Lowtax Library at http://www.lowtaxlibrary.com/asp/subs_reports.asp and a description of the report can be seen at http://www.lowtaxlibrary.com/asp/description_report6.asp
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