Spain to Return to the COM Market?

Carlos Hernandez, recently appointed head of the Spanish online gambling regulator body (DGOJ) has announced that his aim was to rejoin the regulated market with the international field.

Next year, Spain aims to return to the .com online poker market. In an interview with the Spanish Poker Red magazine, the recently appointed head of the domestic online gambling regulator body DGOJ, Carlos Hernandez announced that he intendws to rejoin the country with the international online poker market by mid-2014.

Prior to Hernandez’ appointment, the DGOJ primarily focused on establishing an Italian, French and Spanish common market and the three regulating bodies have had several meetings to discuss the matter. However, Hernandez now considers the option to merge these markets merely a temporary solution and aims at an even wider concept, saying that “if opening liquidity to Italy makes sense, then opening it entirely to dot-com pools is also justified.”

He was appointed head of DGOJ two months ago and has been studying the statistics and results of the segregated as well as international markets. According to him, while it has never been a secret that the former perform a lot worse, it has become all the clearer to him that instant reforms are required, taking into consideration that summer numbers paint an even darker picture.

Hernandez does not believe creating the segregated markets was a mistake but considers it a first step towards regulation. They provide protection for players, keeping rooms from exploiting them, but now is time to work on returning to the international market, which boasts a far greater liquidity, while maintaining the positive results of the regulation. To this end, a suitable tax system needs to be developed, along the necessary regulations to protect players.

If Spain does indeed return to the .com market, it may well convince Italy and France as well to take similar steps, instead of developing a merged market. After the French regulatory body ARJEL published their H1 2013 results, it became apparent that both the player pool and incomes have dropped in comparison with the previous year. Online cash game players moved 14% less money in the whole French market in the first half of 2013 than in 2012. The state profited 12% less from online poker and the number of active players dropped by 7%.

With similarly worrying results in the Italian and Spanish markets as well, all regulators agree that segregation has failed; the liquidity of online poker can only be maintained with a large player pool. Of course, their return to the .com market would do the latter good, too, with the segregation being the second major blow to the previously steady development of the market in 2011 after Black Friday. Most US regulars moved to places where they could access the .com skins and so did many Italian, French and Spanish pros as well. As a result, the smaller international field was overrun by regulars.

Rooms reacted, introducing improvements to favour recreational players at the expense of regulars, trying to keep net contributors in the system, who are otherwise discouraged from playing by the strong field. If to a smaller degree, the drop in player numbers in the international market testifies to these trends. The return of the segregated markets would, therefore, help restore the economic balance of the global field, favouring regulars, recreational players and rooms alike.