Online Sport Betting Developments and Athletic Activity Funding

Abstract

On the 24th of March 2011 the European Commission issued the so called Green Paper on online gambling in the Internal Market. The European Commission’s purpose is to tackle the problems resulting from the rapid development of on-line gambling in the EU. As long as sport betting services providers were operating at a national level, member states could easily regulate the matter providing also funding of athletic activities. This was done by implementing either a system of licensed operators or a strictly controlled monopoly (state owned or otherwise). These two regulatory models co-existed within the internal market, up until the day when the development of internet and the increased supply of online gambling services have made it more difficult for the different national regulatory models to co-exist. The harmonization at EU level of all national legal provisions on betting as a whole should be considered as an opportunity for the athletic establishment to exploit the fact that there is a broad consensus that sport events, on which gambling relies, should receive a fair return from the sports related gambling activity.