First Bulgarian online sports betting licence awarded
Malta-based Eurofootball will become first licensed site to go live once fee is paid as country's blacklist grows
The Bulgarian Gambling Commission has awarded the country’s first online sports betting licence to Malta-based Eurofootball.
The operator will become the first licensed sportsbook under the Eurofootball.bg domain once it has paid the licence fee of around 20,000.
Bulgaria’s gambling regulator had been expected to begin awarding online operator licences last year following the passage of legislation in the Bulgarian parliament in March 2012.
However the Gambling Commission has instead been preparing for its ring-fenced dot.bg market by drawing up a blacklist of unlicensed gaming sites, containing operators including Bet365, Betfair and Ladbrokes.
Yesterday it added William Hill’s Centrebet brand and Austrian operator Interwetten to the list, which now incorporates some 133 domains.
The blacklist was created following the Bulgarian parliament passing a mandate granting the Commission the power to order internet service providers to block unlicensed sites.
A spokesperson for the Bulgarian Gambling Commission told eGaming Review the organisation had yet to receive final licence applications from other sports betting operators, however added it hoped to award more licences in the near future.