PartyPoker Pulls Out of France: Fears Norway, Netherlands as Well
The climate in Scandinavia and the Netherlands is not good right now for online poker. And France is definitely not good. While PartyPoker considers limited advertising exposure in the aforementioned countries, they were forced to pull out of France entirely this past week.
Mitch Garber, CEO of PartyPoker, decided the regulatory environment in France right now is way too unstable.
French authorities have called a number of Garber's colleagues in for interviews about the legality of their marketing operations in France, most notably the spam-heavy 888.com.
Amid the uncertainty, an unidentified PartyGaming shareholder sold 123m shares on Monday - four days after the company told its marketing affiliates it was closing to French business overnight.
A message on PartyGaming's official affiliate web page said: "With effect from 23 February 2007, PartyGaming will no longer accept wagers from customers based in France. Customers resident in France or accessing our servers from France will no longer be able to access our real money gaming services ... They will be able to cash out their present balances if they wish."
PartyPoker was forced to leave the US market last October following the passage of a law that would make banking with online poker rooms difficult, though not impossible.
But unlike the US market, which represented approximately 80% of PartyPoker's business, Garber insisted that France was no more than 2%.
Despite leaving the US, PartyPoker has remained the second largest online poker site in the world, a testament to its growth over the past five years.
Gambling911.com
Mitch Garber, CEO of PartyPoker, decided the regulatory environment in France right now is way too unstable.
French authorities have called a number of Garber's colleagues in for interviews about the legality of their marketing operations in France, most notably the spam-heavy 888.com.
Amid the uncertainty, an unidentified PartyGaming shareholder sold 123m shares on Monday - four days after the company told its marketing affiliates it was closing to French business overnight.
A message on PartyGaming's official affiliate web page said: "With effect from 23 February 2007, PartyGaming will no longer accept wagers from customers based in France. Customers resident in France or accessing our servers from France will no longer be able to access our real money gaming services ... They will be able to cash out their present balances if they wish."
PartyPoker was forced to leave the US market last October following the passage of a law that would make banking with online poker rooms difficult, though not impossible.
But unlike the US market, which represented approximately 80% of PartyPoker's business, Garber insisted that France was no more than 2%.
Despite leaving the US, PartyPoker has remained the second largest online poker site in the world, a testament to its growth over the past five years.
Gambling911.com
posted by Ace In The Hole at 5:49 AM
1 Comments:
Hello,
I live in france and I'm playing online poker for several years. Can someone please tell me exactly what the government plans to do in order to prohibit those games? When all this supposed to happen?
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