Poker News – If Spain and Italy thought shared liquidity was already a done deal, the latest news coming from the French National Assembly is going to be a the game changer nobody wanted.
“We should simply realize that poker is a little out of fashion today,” said the Rapporteur of the Committee on Economic Affairs Razzy Hammadi on Wednesday to the French National Assembly while explaining his negative opinion about an amendment to the current gambling law which would open European shared liquidity.
“I am against [European shared liquidity] as it would turn online poker into an uncontrollable ogre eating one market after the other,” he continued, opposing to a text that was introduced to the assembly by Damien Abat for, as the text said, “authorizing licensed operators to offer their players the opportunity to play with players registered on online gaming operators owning a license issued by another member of the European Union according to the agreement regulating the European Economic Area.”
Hence, while in another Parisian building the director of France’s gambling regulator ARJEL, Mr. Jean-François Vilotte, was holding a press conference to explain some of the reasons that forced him to step down from his position in January, the French parliament decided that French players are not meant to share their online tables with any of their fellow European poker lovers.
“There are two ways to understand the tightening of the market,” said Hammadi in front of the assembly. “We could simply realize that despite significant investments in advertising and development, poker is now gone a little out of fashion, or we could at the same time consider that the need of an everyday greater liquidity is part of online poker economical structure. As a rapporteur, I am against that as it brings to my mind the idea of [online poker] becoming an uncontrollable ogre eating one market after the other.”
