iGB: Can prediction markets crack Europe’s regulatory wall?

By Martin Bjoerck (iGB)

As prediction markets boom in the US, European regulators move swiftly to block them, exposing a widening a transatlantic divide over whether they are considered financial innovation or simply unlicensed gambling.

In 2024, as Americans placed billions of dollars on the outcome of their presidential election, a curious new financial spectacle unfolded online. On prediction market platform Polymarket, traders wagered not through traditional bets but through contracts priced like financial assets, reflecting the crowd’s collective view of Donald Trump’s electoral chances. The market proved uncannily prescient, correctly forecasting the result before many pollsters did. 

iGB: Should the EU implement its own harmonised gambling tax? A political idea meets legal reality

By Martin Bjoerck (iGB)

Brussels proposes an EU gambling tax to fund education, but legal realities and market fragmentation make an EU levy a distant prospect.

Europe’s online gambling industry has grown quietly into one of the continent’s most complex digital markets: cross-border in nature and increasingly lucrative for government treasuries. Now a new political proposal in Brussels seeks to tap into that revenue stream at the European level. 

iGB: Germany player losses cases remain in limbo as ECJ opinion fails to address German law uncertainties

by Nicole Macedo

A new case opinion about ECJ player losses has ruled cases brought against operators without local licences are not an abuse of EU law.

Hundreds of player losses cases in Germany face further delays after an opinion released by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has failed to determine whether Germany’s gambling treaty was compatible with EU law. 

However, the opinion deemed the court had been provided with sufficient information to assess the compatibility of German law with EU law. 

Read the whole article on iGB.

TIME Law News 1/25

The new edition of TIME Law News (01/25) has just been published with articles reporting on developments in online gambling news and AI news:
https://lnkd.in/dgJmaME3

Does Germany’s new government have a shot at tackling illegal gambling?

By Imogen Goodman, iGB

Imogen Goodman considers how a federal intervention from Germany’s new coalition government could improve the sector’s fight against illegal gambling.

In their coalition pact released on 9 April, the incoming government in Germany set itself another ambitious goal: tackling the rampant illegal gambling sector.  

“Together with the federal states, we will improve the fight against illegal gambling,” the parties write on page 92. A brief statement, but in the eyes of many industry spectators, one that could prove significant.  

Germany’s new government has a daunting task ahead of it when it enters office on 6 May. In recent years, the country’s economy has been buckling under the weight of numerous structural problems, from an aging population to endless red tape.

Together, the centre-right alliance of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Christian Social Union (CSU) and the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) are tasked with getting the country back on its feet.

So far, the parties have set out a range of plans to do just that: a €500 billion infrastructure fund, a bonfire of bureaucracy, incentives for employees to work overtime and cuts in corporation tax from 2028. 

Read the whole article on iGB