Looks like a law was passed today in Spain to increase regulation of online gambling. It sounds like the implementation is different than that in Italy and France but I'm not sure whether Spaniards will only be able to play with Spaniards or whether it will remain open and they are simply introducing regulations and allowing Spanish companies to compete - I am hoping very much for the latter. It is also unclear when this will take effect.

Some articles about it in Spanish -

http://www.hoytecnologia.com/noticia...-entrar/129084

http://www.paginanoticias.es/noticia...-del-Juego.htm

Can anyone shed further light on the future of online poker in Spain?

So much for the eu an free trade.

who the hell in these governments think a high raking monopoly is best? Fish bust quicker and games will dry up.

Thank God. I hate those Spanish shortstackers.

I think their government just wants it's players to stop being LAGtards. It's giving Spain a bad rep.

:f what is wrong with these governments

please dear GOD, don`t let the spanish out of poker, please.

The American Gov. is setting the standard for greed. Can't blame anyone else for following suit... Or at least Americans can't talk down about other gov's actions on this from an equality standpoint.

I'm having a hard time reading it in Google translate, however from the first article, the points I gathered were:

Gambling is big business and can no longer be ignored (from a state point of view)
The State Lottery in Spain wants in as a games provider online
The same body wants to see regulation put in place to promote "openness and transparency in the market, benefiting operators, public administrations and, above all, consumers"
Some text about protecting the "sales market" in online gambling in Spain

Goes on to say the EU Court Of Justice ruled recently that the measures taken by Italy and France to segregate the player market weren't in breach of community standards in the EU and can be used to combat "fraud and crime". Ruling came about because BWin was fined 75k for providing online games to Portuguese recently and lodged an appeal to the EU over it.

States that the association of national lotteries that covers 20 European Countries maintains that the state can enforce a monopoly on online gambling and that the recent rulings are a great victory for Governments & State Lotteries in preventing companies from Gibraltar, Malta and Channel Islands offering games to their citizens.

I haven't had a chance to look at the other link yet as I got a headache reading the Google Translate version of the first one. However, it's very bad news. It appears that the Spanish player pool will be segregated at the very least, at worst the only site they'll be allowed play on is the state ran lotteries site.

The EU ruling that what France and Italy have done was perfectly legitimate is horrendous though. Going by what the article says, I would expect to see Spain, Portugal and Belgium segregating their player pools in the near future. First Italy and France, now the other big donators in online poker will be gone shortly.

I don't think there's much that can be done about it either, the EU has become a terrible institution riddled with greed and corruption and I sincerely believe that the quicker it falls, the better for its citizens.

Well it seems that spain is just going the route us players want, regulation ... in spain's case, not just online poker but online gaming in general including government lotteries and sports betting. The 2 most relevant quotes I found were in the 2nd article:
This is essentially saying that online games have seduced around 400,00 spaniards in the last 4 years, especially sports betting and Poker.

The companies that will offer online gaming will have to use .es domain names to allow supervision and control to be in the hands of spanish authorities.

All of this is planned to take effect by the end of this year.

I wonder will it be a .es portal into the main player pool, or a .es site with a segregated player pool the same way .fr and .it work?

I would imagine it'll be the latter unfortunately but would be delighted if it were the former, for obvious reasons.

Realistically now is the time, given the situation in the US, that Stars should be trying to push for a European inter-state setup that either operates on a .eu or individual sites (.co.uk, .es, .fr, .it, .ie, .pl etc) that feed into a main player pool so that EU residents can play vs one another without state intervention so to speak.

I'm sure it won't happen and we'll be left with a case where each of the greedy EU states tries to get in on the money, segregates the player pools and the game eventually dies and instead of a few companies getting money and the governments get money through company taxes, nobody gets anything. Simply because the EU is terribly ran from the bottom to the top.

Wow online poker gg

more bad news are coming I believe, the golden years of online poker is over soon...

This is so bizarre. Online companies forced to restrict their customer base to a specific country? Seems like this trend could infect all of Europe soon. Is there any precedence for this kind of action (other than online gambling)? I'm in U.S. so maybe I am just not aware this is commonplace.

This

Would it make any difference if the EU fell? The problem in this case is the shameless and rapacious member states with no respect for free trade or individual freedom.