Segregated Poker in Portugal

Wednesday December 2,2015 : CONFUSION ON POSSIBILITY OF SEGREGATED POKER IN PORTUGAL

Transition period before considering cross-border liquidity?

Manuela Bandeira, director of the Portuguese gambling authority, Regulação Inspeção de Jogos – Turismo de Portugal, indicated during a presentation at the Gambling Compliance conference in Lisbon that cross-border liquidity is not guaranteed once Portugual’s online poker market goes live.

“It’s not a simple issue,” Bandeira said.  “We have had meetings with regulators in other countries to better understand how it can work.”

In a follow-up Q&A session, PokerNews reports Bandeira expanded on the issue saying, “We are aware what effect a closed market will have on our country, and hope to join Spain and France in a joint market.  But there would be a transition period until shared liquidity can be made sort of a “Bosman Law” of online gaming.