Sports betting right "a breach of EU law"
Professor Ben Van Rompuy says sports betting right would breach EU freedom to provide goods and services
The introduction of EU-wide sports betting rights would be a breach of European law and an inefficient way to fund grassroots sport, according to leading sports and media professor Ben Van Rompuy.
Van Rompuy, who also acts as senior consultant to the Asser International Sports Law Center in The Hague, was speaking this morning to a delegation at the European Sports Forum in Milan.
The professor, who has published a number of studies on the relationship between sports, media rights and EU competition law, said the establishment of a betting right would be considered a restriction to trade.
“A right to consent to bet will be a restriction of free movement of gambling services under article 56 Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union,” Van Rompuy said.
Van Rompuy added that the method of collecting money via a betting right would be inefficient with there being “better ways to allocate money to grassroots sports”.
An EU-wide betting right has been floated as potential revenue stream for sports governing bodies to fund grassroots sport in which they would charge betting operators a fee in return for the right to offer betting markets on sporting events.
The system is currently in operation in France, however, there has been some resistance to the idea from the online sports betting community and Remote Gaming Association chief executive Clive Hawkswood told eGaming Review that he welcomed Van Rompuy’s intervention.
“We have argued long and hard that any form of a sports betting right is not the easy reform that many sporting bodies would have politicians believe,” Hawkswood said. “It is fraught with legal difficulty and Ben Van Rompuy’s comments today couldn’t make that clearer.”
The idea is currently under consideration by the UK government as it looks for alternative to the horseracing betting levy, a system which has been in place for more than 50 years.