Jackpot Party awarded Belgian licence
Ten further sites blacklisted, including winner.com and casinotropez.com.
The WMS-owned Jackpot Party brand has been given the green light to operate an online casino offering in the regulated Belgian market.
The award of a licence to land-based partner Casino van Knokke makes it the sixth A+ licensee in the European country, alongside the land-based partners of Groupe Partouche, PokerStars, Unibet, casino777 and Win2Day.
Meanwhile the Belgian Gaming Commission (BGC) has blacklisted a further 10 domains, bringing the total up to 55.
Among the latest names added to the blacklist are Playtech-powered CasinoTropez.com – which is also on the Danish blacklist – and iPoker network skin Winner.com.
Jackpot Party agreed to provide a dot.be casino offering for Partouche earlier this year, making Belgium its second market after the UK.
At the time, WMS president Orrin J Edidin said: “We look forward to working collaboratively to create cross-marketing opportunities that will complement [Partouche’s] land-based casino operations by providing players with the convenience of playing at home, in addition to playing at the casino.”
Belgium’s egaming regulations have been met with criticism from a number of dot.com operators, with executives from 12 companies calling on the European Commission to take action against measures requiring online operators to hold a land-based presence on Belgian soil.
A number of high-profile operators have been added to the blacklist after continuing to take Belgian players from their dot.com domains, including William Hill, bwin.party and Betfair.
Peter Naessens, head of the BGC’s regulatory unit, denied that the regulations were protectionist, saying: “In the absence of a common European framework on gaming we are taking actions and not just using words – we think [our system] is viable for European operators without such a [Europe-wide] model.”