“One thing you need to realize is that this industry has always been under
siege and probably always will be,” said Sue Schneider, CEO of River City
Group in her welcoming remarks to attendees of the European I-Gaming
Congress and Exhibition (EiG) Wednesday morning. More than 1,000 delegates
are in attendance at the Clarion Events ATE/River City Group produced event
this week where the theme is “coming together.” Staggering problems have
lately emerged on both sides of the Atlantic for the global companies that
deal in the interactive gambling space. On one side European Member States
have begun taking more aggressive actions to prevent foreign companies from
offering Internet gambling services to their citizens, while on the other
the American government has passed legislation aimed at prohibiting most
forms of Internet gambling altogether. Things are complicated further by
the fact that several online gambling companies listed shares on public
stock exchanges in 2005 and 2006. The listings were hailed as a means to
bring more credibility and transparency to the companies, but ironically
those that listed now face problems that their private rivals may be able to
sidestep– if they dare. “There are personal risks and there are corporate
concerns, and you have to be aware of how those color decisions,” said
Schneider. In the last two weeks several of the publicly-traded firms such
as PartyGaming and 888 responded to the American prohibition by shutting
down their operations to American consumers. Most of the private firms on
the other hand are taking a wait-and-see approach to the American
prohibition and may be hoping it will prove unenforceable. Although
expansion in Europe has been a goal in which a lot of online gambling
companies have succeeded in 2006, Member State governments would prefer to
put an end to the expansion so that their own domestic operators can
dominate the market.

Following Schneider on the program was Norbert Teufelberger, one of the
co-CEO’s of European betting giant bwin.com who was arrested in France last
month on charges related to offering betting to French citizens without a
proper license.

Tuefelberger echoed EiG’s underlying theme of “coming together” by revealing
that his company was working with others to formulate a two-year lobbying
and public relations campaign. “We will bring information to the
decision-makers,” he stated.

Schneider noted in her remarks that a number of regulators from EU
governments and representatives from state-run companies are attendance. No
American regulators are in attendance.

When asked later that evening about her impression of what was going on at
the conference Schneider replied: “There is a lot of discussion among the
delegates about what sort of changes the may need to take place among their
companies and how they’re going to handle that sort of thing.”