Quote:
Originally Posted by SootedPowa
Would you say Poland is as clearly illegal as Russia/Australia Richas? Hence these 3 countries - Poland/Russia/Australia MUST be removed under the terms of the new UK licence?
My assessment, for the little it is worth, is that Russia and Aus can't really have a sensible legal defence for continuing to be served by a UK licenced firm so they are toast. They are black not grey.
Poland is in the EU so it gets more complicated, whilst their laws are very anti those laws are likely in contradiction to their obligations under the EU treaties and so can be appealed to the European Court of Justice. That might just create enough wiggle room for Poland (and Sweden). It is also what makes Germany comparatively safe even though their laws are a total mess and they are trying to get an overly restrictive licencing policy of the ground.
Similarly for Romania that is trying to get its licencing up and running now.
One aside for Canadians - or anyone in a potential grey market. Well over a year ago BWIN.PARTY suspended accepting new players from a list of grey markets (Argentina, Armenia, Belarus, Brazil, Colombia, Croatia, Cyprus, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia and the Ukraine) but they let existing players continue. Last week Bet365 did the same for Romanians.
The UKGC guidelines are that any market worth 3% of revenues or any market targetted by the firm needs to have legal justification. If Canada or whichever grey market is below 3% of the revenues if the site stopped accepting new players from that country then they would not be asked for a legal justification by the UKGC. Not in the spirit of the law but they coul then quietly carry on serving their existing customers....sneaky, underhand and a bit of rule dodging really but in their return to the UKGC they could just say, revenues below 3%, not accepting any new players and then they don't need to offer a legal justification.
In practical terms that means that it makes sense for Canadians and other grey market players to make sure that they have live open accounts with any site about to be UK licenced NOW, in case there is a partial pull out with some exiting completely and others just stopping taking new customers.