Legalized Online Gambling is coming to Spain

The long road that the Spanish government has taken on its way to a legalized the online gambling market seems to be nearing its happy end.

For the past year the Spanish government has been engaging its legislative process and going back and forth on the specifics of its proposed online gambling law.

The Spanish government had to resolve issues of licensing and taxing and as we reported back in February; officials took on the advice of different research groups that guided them to do a complete u-turn on their originally proposed structure of taxation as they realized that what they originally proposed was not workable as far as online gambling operators were concerned.

The amended bill was approved on Friday and now offers a licensing system that requires online gambling operators wishing to provide online gambling products to Spanish punters to get a state-approved license, valid for a period of eighteen months and then reapply if wish license to be extended.

The new bill will introduce relevant regulatory framework for all online channels and is the first new piece of legislation to tackle gambling since the decriminalization of gambling in Spain in 1977.

The new bill prohibits online operators from developing and offering gambling products that are exclusive to the Spanish National Lottery and other state-approved lotteries. However all other gambling products can be developed and offered to the Spaniards once licensed.

The newly approved bill should be made into official law within the next few days, just in time for the privatization process that the Spanish government is planning for its National Public Lottery (LAE) by offering 30% of stocks this summer.

The LAE privatization process is one of the reasons that the Spanish government had to fast track the new bill as to not create a situation where part of the national lottery is privately owned and therefore it's offering lottery services online will be a violation of Spanish law.

The new bill has enjoyed the support of many players advocacy groups, online gaming operators that now plan on entering the Spanish market legally and the Spanish parliament as it will provide Spain with greater proceeds from taxation and improve the financial situation in a country that is still suffering from the effects of the financial crisis of 2008.