A European Commission-funded study into sports betting rights for event organizers in the European Union has concluded that there is no legal basis or rationale for an EU-wide right to consent to bets. The study, carried out by the Dutch Asser Institute and Institute for Information Law of the University of Amsterdam, was designed to map out the rights of sports organizers in the EU, with a particular focus on sports betting operators.

The study found that the “costs associated with the administering of the right to consent to bets will always be considerable” and that there is “no evidence for a link between the financial return stemming from a right to consent to bets and the financing of grassroots sport”. In addition, the study also concluded that French sports betting right, whereby betting operators must obtain the consent of sports organizers in order to offer bets, is not an effective mechanism for financial distribution to sport or as an integrity instrument against match-fixing.

The study also stated it is not evident that “safeguarding the integrity of sports events constitutes the principal rationale of the French right to consent to bets”. Elsewhere, the study discovered that the right to consent to bets risks leaving the less popular and less viable sports more exposed to “integrity risks” as for the majority of sports organizers, the financial return would be “insufficient” to cover their own integrity costs.

The study also stated that the conditions required to implement a right to consent to bets are capable of “constituting an unjustified restriction of the free moment of services” in the EU. It went on to say that the right establishes a monopoly for sports “leading to the creation of a dominant position within the meaning of Article 102 Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union” and anti-competitive concerns.