The Financial Times has reported a deal signed late last month between the United States and three fellow World Trade Organisation (WTO) nations seeking compensation in the wake of an online gambling dispute has been revealed as less meaningful than was first hoped. The dispute arose last year after the Americans lost a WTO dispute with Antigua and Barbuda over discriminatory legislation covering online gambling.

Online betting companies including BWIN Interactive Entertainment and Fluxx are gearing up to file a legal complaint against German state monopoly on lotteries and most forms of betting, law firm Hambach & Hambach head Wulf Hambach said. Hambach said that he represents about 20 of the world’s biggest betting companies, according to the local newspaper the Die Welt.

Major betting companies Expekt, Ladbrokes, Betsson and Unibet have launched a new Responsible Gambling Code in Norway in a move designed to counter a government initiative to ban its citizens from transferring funds to foreign online gaming companies. Under the proposed ban, Norwegian customers would be stopped from betting on football or cross-country skiing online but the new Code seeks to promote and strongly support responsible gambling in answer to one of the Government’s justifications for the proposals.

During last year, players left USD 840 million of gross income in Panamenian casinos. This figure registrates a 13.5% growth with regards to 2006, when the total income was USD 740 million. The numbers show that the campaign performed by different trade unions in order to prevent players to go to casinos has had little effect. Antonio Alfaro, president of the Association of Games of Chance Administrators (ASAJA), confirmed that the increment of players is stronger month after month.

In a surprise move, the United States has “advised” Antigua and Barbuda to delay taking any action after being awarded USD 21 million in annual trade sanctions by a World Trade Organisation (WTO) arbitration panel earlier this month. According to the Associated Press news agency, US Trade Representative Spokesman Sean Spicer stated that the tiny Caribbean island nation should wait to implement any sanctions pending American changes to its international trade obligations under the WTO treaty.

Online gambling will be banned in Germany starting January 1 as part of an accord with states that preserves the country’s state monopoly for lotteries and most forms of betting. All 16 German state legislatures voted by mid-December to approve the new online-betting laws, which the states negotiated after the Federal Constitutional Court overturned earlier rules. The new rules ban any form of Web-based gambling or brokering of games over the Internet.

The United States Friday urged Antigua to hold off on imposing sanctions authorized by the WTO in a dispute over online gambling, saying Washington was revising its WTO commitments. US Trade Representative (USTR) spokesman Sean Spicer advised Antigua to delay any action after an arbitrator for the Geneva-based World Trade Organization allowed the Caribbean nation to impose sanctions worth USD 21 million a year, with the right to target US services, copyrights and trademarks.

The United States has reached a deal with the European Union, Japan and Canada to keep its Internet gambling market closed to foreign companies, but is continuing talks with India, Antigua and Barbuda, Macau and Costa Rica, US trade officials said. "We are pleased to confirm that the United States has reached agreement ... with Canada, the EU and Japan," Gretchen Hamel, a spokeswoman for the US Trade Representative’s office, said in a statement several hours after the EU had announced details of the deal it had reached with Washington.

A new trade pact shuts companies like Partygaming out of the US market for good and sends them looking for new markets in Europe and Asia. The odds seem to be stacked against Europe’s online betting sector. After being shut out of the US market last year, companies such as British Partygaming and Austrian Bwin were dealt another blow on December 17 when the European Commission announced a trade settlement with the US that scuppers their chances of re-entering that lucrative market.

Bulgarian lawmakers rejected the controversial amendments to the country’s gambling laws proposed by the cabinet and criticized by the opposition and president Georgi Parvanov, Sofia News Agency reports. The amendments bill proposed to tax betting firms 10% of their profit, rather than 10% of their turnover, as it is now, and has sparked a heated debate on the parliamentary floor.

Canberra - Oscar-winning Australian actor Russell Crowe has succeeded in a long-running fight to have gambling machines banned from the Sydney football club he co-owns in a bid to make it more family-friendly. Crowe and fellow owner, millionaire businessman Peter Holmes a Court, on Wednesday night succeeded in convincing skeptical board members of the South Sydney Rabbitohs to dump the club's 160 slot machines...

Banking lobbyists are warning the US Treasury that regulations proposed in the wake of last year's sweeping anti-gambling law will be impossible to comply with unless the Bush administration clarifies its conflicting views on online betting. The Financial Services Roundtable, which represents dozens of banks and other financial services firms, said it was "very concerned" that adoption of the rules could impose "significant" and costly compliance burdens on banks.