LONDON - Ritz Club, a gaming club at London's upmarket Ritz Hotel, said it had closed its online gaming site amid legal actions against the sector in Europe and the United States.

"In light of the current confusion and inconsistency in online gaming legislation worldwide, the owners of The Ritz Club London Online have, regretfully, decided to close the site to new customers with immediate effect," Ritz Club said on Tuesday in a statement on the Web site www.ritzclublondon.com.

A spokeswoman for Ritz Club in London said the site had been taken down on Friday and there were no longer any links from the club's main Web site to the online gaming site.

Shares across the sector have taken a series of knocks since July as some U.S. politicians seek to ban Internet gambling there and as U.S. and European prosecutors target executives from BETonSPORTS, Sportingbet and Bwin.com.

UK gaming stocks have lost a combined 2.4 billion pounds in value since the end of June as the industry continues to lose executives. On Monday, World Gaming said its chairman and a director had resigned.

LONDON (Reuters) - Several European states have taken action against online gaming companies in a bid to protect their own gambling operations, but the tactic looks likely to accelerate the demise of their own monopolies.

A battle is unfolding across Europe for control of a sector that takes more than 70 billion euros ($89 billion) from European gamblers, rattling a market viewed until recently as a safe haven.

This summer's arrests in the United States of executives from Sportingbet and BETonSPORTS underlined the urgency for online gaming groups to diversify away from the U.S., where politicians are trying to outlaw the industry.

With Asia seen as risky and too fragmented, many gaming companies had pinned their hopes on Europe, but that changed last week when French prosecutors detained the two heads of Austrian betting firm Bwin.com to investigate alleged violations of gaming laws.

Bwin is also contesting bans on taking sports bets in the German states of Bavaria, Saxony and Hesse.

"Things are coming to a head," said Simon Holliday at gaming consultants GBGC.

"The industry is currently in a legal grey area, but we think this will accelerate the speed it opens up. But I wouldn't be surprised if it got worse before it got better," he added.

EU ACTION

Betfair Managing Director Mark Davies said it was wrong to equate the situation in Europe with that in the U.S.

"The two are completely different," he said. "In America it is clearly illegal to take sports bets over the Internet, but in Europe it's clearly legal."

Last week, European Union Internal Market Commissioner Charlie McCreevy said eight EU countries might be added to a list of seven already facing legal action for refusing to open their betting markets. France is said to be among them.

"France could have shot themselves in the foot by getting this aggressive, as it could bring the whole process forward," said Holliday. "We thought it would take five, six or seven years to sort itself out, but it now looks like two to three years."

Although European Union law allows cross-border trade by gambling companies under the Treaty of Rome, many individual states prevent it, claiming they are protecting the public from gambling addiction.

European Lotteries, which represents 74 organisations, said gambling was a unique activity, and states should be allowed to monopolise it to protect consumers and regulate crime.

But critics say these same states promote equally addictive national lotteries, and accuse them of hypocrisy.

BODY OF LAW

British gaming group Ladbrokes sparked three of the European Commission's investigations, with complaints against Sweden, Finland and the Netherlands, said John O'Reilly, managing director of Ladbrokes's Internet division.

"I think what we've seen in recent weeks is a bit of a backlash by European member states who want to treat betting as a national issue," he said.

After seven or eight years of trying to get national legal disputes heard at a European level, O'Reilly said he welcomed the prospect of clarity.

Evelyn Heffermehl at law firm Ulys in Brussels said France's action against Bwin did not signal Europe was becoming a riskier place for online gaming groups.

"They can be seen rather as a sign that the monopolies in general, and in France in this specific case, are concerned that they might not 'survive' for long," said Heffermehl.

"Europe is currently facing a transition period between old restrictive regulations, with monopolies etc, and opening of the market."

But Dr David Forrest at Britain's Salford University said he thought there was insufficient consensus in the 25-member European Union for a swift political resolution.

"Policy is likely to evolve in the courts rather than politically," he said. "It could go on for years on a case-by-case basis until there's a body of law."

September 15, 2006
Tony BromhamPrint
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Post a comment UK Poker News has, since April - ahead of the first event at the Gutshot Club in London at the time - highlighted The Showdown Poker Tour at every opportunity.

At the outset of this Tour, the following itinerary was publicised:

- The Gutshot Club, London, England (3rd - 7th May 2006)
- Fitzwilliam Card Club, Dublin, Ireland (24th - 28th May 2006)
- Reval Hotel Lietuva, Vilnius, Lithuania (date pending)
- Casino Barriere de Trouville, Trouville, France (6th - 10th August 2006)
- Reval Park Hotel & Casino, Tallinn, Estonia (31st August - 3rd September 2006)
- Casino Marienlyst, Elsinore, Denmark (19th - 22nd October 2006)
- Casino Esplanade, Hamburg, Germany (27th - 30th November 2006)

We welcomed the Tour's formation as an additional high-profile poker tour in Europe, reported on the inaugural event and the follow up in Dublin and publicised the remaining scheduled events. The Vilnius date has never been confirmed and has since disappeared from the schedule. The events in Trouville, France, and Tallinn, Estonia were due to be held in early and late August respectively. Both were postponed.

All of the above dates were publicised on the Showdown Tour's own website and there was plenty of fanfare about the recruitment of the four Hendon Mob members as players at each event and leading international Tournament Director, Matt Savage, as exclusive TD. Since then, there has been very little in the way of useful information posted on the website; no reports of the events that have taken place nor quotes from players ever seem to appear there. There is sketchy information about the two subsequent postponements as follows:

Trouville:

"Due to the current changes in the French gaming laws, our Trouville event in August will be moved to another casino within the Lucien Barrière casino group later this year. We are looking forward to releasing the new venue shortly."

Tallinn:

"The Showdown event in Tallinn will be postponed since the summer's large tournaments left too little room for the event."

The latter reason seems a little vague given that it was publicised in March as one of the legs of the Tour. We can only speculate that its meaning is that too few players wished to play after the WSOP and the countless other events that now crowd out the poker calendar. In many ways this is not surprising. In the UK alone, there has been plenty of evidence of tournament fatigue with major local events not selling out to capacity. At European level, the now well-established European Poker Tour is about to commence Season 3 in Barcelona.

It didn't help future publicity when the first two Showdown Poker Tour events that were actually held (London and Dublin) attracted a mere 23 and 21 players respectively, and four of these were under their Hendon Mob commitment. With just the top three or four places receiving prizes in those circumstances, poker players are seemingly not prepared to risk putting up the substantial €5,000 buy-in plus a hefty casino fee (6% or €300 at most venues, but 11% or €550 at the next leg in Denmark!) when the first prize is only likely to be modest.

Contrast this with the imminent EPT event in Barcelona. The buy-in is set at €4,800 + €200 fee and the Main Event is sold out to its 480 player capacity. The prize money is in serious Euros!

The Showdown Poker Tour was ambitious from the outset, as evidenced by the entry buy-ins of €5,000 for each (plus the substantial registration fees at each card room) and a whopping €10,000 (plus €500 fee) for the Grand Final event at Hamburg, Germany, in November.

The aims of the Tour were, and remain, worthy. From the Showdown Tour website:

"Our aim is to create a poker tour truly for the players. It's all about being truly independent, more 'down to earth', having better venues and a player friendly structure. This is in short our aim with the Showdown Poker Tour.

"The Showdown Poker Tour includes both well established and brand new poker venues across Europe. Furthermore, by joining forces with some of the most professional tournament director forces in the world you can expect a number of exciting and true player-focused events."

The ambition was further evidenced with the TV plans:

"Each final table will be televised and broadcast on TV stations across Europe, culminating in sixteen hours of poker on TV. The Hamburg event is to be the Grand Final with a buy-in of €10,000 and an estimated prize pool of €3,000,000, with the winner taking down an estimated €1,000,000."

Whilst those figures appear unlikely to occur based on the current trend, UK Poker News, as a supporter of UK and European poker initiatives, hopes that the Showdown Poker Tour meets with eventual success. We will continue to keep an eye on developments.

Sportingbet says chairman Peter Dicks detained by US authorities
LONDON (AFX) - Sportingbet PLC said non-executive chairman Peter Dicks was been detained by US Authorities in the early hours of this morning whilst visiting the US on non-Sportingbet business.

A statement from the company said a hearing for Dicks is scheduled for 2.00 pm BST and added pending clarification of the situation the Board has sought immediate temporary suspension of Sportingbet's shares.

Further information will be issued in due course it added.