Unibet to offer online poker and casino in Belgium
Operator to exploit licence awarded to partner Blancas nv - Gamebookers among five new additions to blacklist.
Unibet has been permitted to offer online poker and casino in Belgium after the Belgian Gaming Commission (BGC) awarded an A+ egaming licence to its dot.be partner Blancas.
The Swedish-listed operator, which recently announced a sponsorship deal with Belgian football club Standard Liège, already offers online sports betting through its F1+ licence.
A Unibet spokesperson revealed to eGaming Review that while the licence is held by Blancas, a land-based Belgian-facing arm of Unibet’s JV partner Rank Group, the operator is able to exploit the licence on its dot.be platform
Its Belgian-facing site currently only displays the sports betting option, after July saw the company become one of four online sportsbook licensees in the EU member state, and the BGC revealed last month that the country’s egaming market was unlikely to have space for more than 10 such licensees in total.
No new sports betting licences have been awarded this month, however five new names have been added to the country’s egaming blacklist, bringing the total up to 50.
Among the new additions is bwin.party brand Gamebookers, which withdrew from the French market last month. Bwin.party has already seen its www.bwin.com and www2.bwin.com domains banned by the regulator, launching two separate legal actions in response. The first of these was unsuccessful and the second is understood to be ongoing.
The other sites added to the blacklist in October are the dot.com domains of GamingClub (Malta-licensed), SupremePlay (Curaço-licensed), SpinPalace (Malta-licensed) and agrandtopeudice (unknown).
List of Belgian A+ egaming licensees:
www.casino777.be
www.pokerstars.be
www.partouche.be
www.win2day.be
www.unibet.be