2012 changes in Online Gambling
The past year the online gambling world has known quite some significant changes. First of all, the Black Friday when the US authorothies closed down the websites of some of the largest online poker operators such as PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker or Absolute Poker / Ultimate Bet Poker. The French market continued its regulation, and same in Italy where online casino games become available after sports betting and poker.
On top of that, we have witnessed in 2011 many consolidations. PartyGaming (owners of PartyPoker, PartyCasino, Gamebookers brands) merged with Bwin into the largest online gambling operator in the world: bwin.Party. Betsson has aquired Betsafe, Sportingbet bought Centrebet bookmaker, while EuroSportBet France was aquired by Unibet.
2012 sees some huge changes in the European gambling arena. Some countries started introducing new online gambling laws, following therefore the local regulations started by Italy and France. Among the new countries that started regulating or forbidding online gambling are Denmark, Spain, Poland and Greece.
As an outcome, starting with January 2012, operators shift their operations:
- Unibet has announced closure for their products to the Spanish market, while relaunching a their product in Denmark under the new regulations
- Ladbrokes will stop accepting players from Greece, Cyprus and Poland
- SportingBet will continue operations in Spain under their local brand, MiApuesta
What other changes should be expected in the coming year are a mistery as online gambling providers start focusing on fewer markets.