Madrid court ruling supports Codere efforts

The court states that any offering and marketing of games of chance and betting carried out remotely before and after the entry into force on May 29, 2011, of a new gaming law is illegal, since they have been developed breaching current prohibitions and without the relevant licences granted in Spain.

This ruling is part of a series of legal actions brought by major operator Codere against a number of online gaming and betting operators that have been offering their activities from tax havens, impervious to the Spanish tax authorities, without licences, without player protection, without paying taxes in Spain, without generating employment and harming those entities which operate lawfully in Spain. This situation has been acknowledged by the Spanish government and the EU.

The legal implications of the ruling tear apart the theory of the “legal vacuum” which has been used by unlicensed operators to justify their Spanish operations.

The direct consequence of this judicial decision is that any companies that have offered online gaming in Spain without the relevant licence have carried out an activity that is “indisputably prohibited” and, hence, unfair competition for those operators that are lawfully authorised in Spain. The granting of online gaming licences under the new law is currently pending before the General Directorate of Gaming Supervision.