The fifth annual European Online Gaming Forum is scheduled to take place in London, as it has in previous years, on February 2, 2015. The event, hosted by think tank organization C5, will take place at Crowne Plaza City Hotel, a 4-star establishment, located along the River Thames.
The purpose of the forum is to discuss the many issues affecting the online gambling market in Europe today. Attendees and speakers include online gambling operators, policy makers, industry leaders, corporation presidents and CEOs, legal professionals, and officials from the United Kingdom’s Gambling Commission.
One topic of discussion is the onset of new industry legislation and regulations from the past year, including the United Kingdom Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Act 2014. This legislation required all remote online operators to petition for a license by November 1, 2014 and start paying a point-of-consumption tax on profits starting on December 1. The laws forced several sites (SBOBet, Winamax, Pokerstars.fr, and more) to leave the British market and affected profits for many others. Operators are expected to discuss the bureaucratic hurdles brought on by the legislation and ways they were able to cope with or adjust to them.
Other topics include marketing, multi-jurisdictional license management, and the new, liberalized markets in both Western and Eastern Europe. In the past year, countries such as Malta, the Netherlands, and Croatia have all taken steps to further expand or encourage the online gambling sectors of their economies. Such liberalizations have facilitated the industry’s overall rapid growth in recent years.
The C5 leadership behind the conference hopes that ideas exchanged will help promote understanding and communication between influential figures of the industry.
The Crowne Plaza City Hotel features over 2,500 square feet of meeting space, five different meeting rooms with capacities of up to 200 people, and easily accessed wireless internet. A press release made public on Monday reveals that C5 expects high attendance for the event.
