Poker News – According to a note published by Sweden’s monopolistic company Svenska Spel, the package of “responsible gambling measures” implemented only six months ago resulted in a 6.2 percent profit loss. According to a report on 2014 Q1, “net gaming revenues decreased by SEK 186 million compared with the same period last year, moving from SEK 2.480 million to 2.293 million” and brought the Swedish gambling group an operating profit of SEK 1.243 million — SEK 83 million smaller than in 2013. “The decrease in revenues was expected,” commented Svenska Spel CEO Lennart Käll, who also added that the…

Poker News – As the Greek Organization of Football Prognostics (OPAP) announced its decision to focus on the creation of a new online sports betting platform in cooperation with GTECH, the risk of Greece running the next online poker monopoly in Europe is now considerably thinner. Although many thought Greece’s government could opt to close its market to international operators in 2014 and put a brand new monopoly in OPAP’s hands, the decision to focus on sports betting and not on poker is a game changer that is going to keep the country’s market open for a while longer. Even…

iGaming Business – The Finland Cabinet Committee on Economic Policy has outlined new measures to help strengthen the country’s gambling monopoly. Under the new measures, the Cabinet Committee is to set up a digital monitoring group in order to analyse ways of preventing operations that violate the Finnish Lotteries Act. As part of this strategy, the Cabinet Committee examined the possibility of tackling illegal marketing through the criteria set of for radio and television licences, which are granted by the government. The Committee said that at this stage, financial transfers will not be proposed as a primary instrument and alternative…