Norway’s resistance coalition of political parties has been able to make good on its pledge last month to force government to inflict DNS blocking of overseas unlicensed competition into the country owned gaming monopolies Norsk Tipping and Norsk Rikstoto (see previous reports).
This week the coalition pushed its proposal, which includes provisions to offend marketers of unlicensed online gaming solutions, through parliament despite government resistance. Whilst the vote went in their favour, it isn’t final, and jobs government with demonstrating legislative changes that accommodate the opposition’s restrictive and commercially protectionist proposals.
Local paper reports appeared out the response of several major foreign online gaming classes where the consensus appeared to be that although the measures may prove more restrictive, and they don’t criminalise punters for using international sites, and are not likely to prevent global firm competition in Norway.
A more important threat to global rivals is likely introduced by government proposals to tighten restrictions on advertising, and an initiative by the Norwegian Gaming Authority to impose tighter controls on Norway’s financial associations regarding online gaming transactions.
