Nylander Update -- According the AFP, Unibet CEO Petter Nylander is set to be extradited to France on Monday. "We are trying to organize his hand-over to the French legal authorities for Monday," Sanna van Meteren of the Amsterdam prosecutor's office told the news source.
Dominique Santacru, Nylander's French lawyer, was quoted by the Times as saying, "Mr. Nylander is the head of a registered business . . . and he is arrested like a common thief."
Several French news sources, including the Agence France-Presse, report that Unibet brass is in negotiations with Dutch and French authorities over the terms of the extradition, more specifically, over whether Nylander will be detained in France or granted bail. Currently, Nylander remains sans passport under Dutch supervision in an Amsterdam hotel.
At one point before his arrest, Nylander had been Holland for meetings, where he reportedly told Dutch newspapers Telegraaf and Volkskrant, "Within five years we'll have a company in the Netherlands as big as Heineken, for instance."
With regard to news of the European Arrest Warrant, under which Nylander was detained, the Financial Times opined: "Betting may well be a crime against common sense but it is hard to see how offering an alternative to the state-run lottery or the national horseracing board justifies anti-terrorist measures . . . If anything, the events of this week have cast into sharp relief France's deeply protectionist culture."
Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt was likewise critical of France for issuing the European Arrest Warrant.
"This will naturally lead to a discussion about whether this is the kind of alleged crime [the European Arrest Warrants] were really intended for," he said.
The Times quipped that France's attempts to preserve its monopoly have led to "comic episodes, such as the rushed passing of a ban on play by minors after the State argued to Brussels that gambling was a health risk that needed state control. In June, police raided the Paris session of the France Poker Tour and confiscated the chips on the ground that they carried the logo of Unibet, which sponsored the tournament."
And finally, last year, bwin co-CEO Manfred Bodner had this to say about his brief stay in France: "It was the most difficult test for both of us in our lives. We come from well protected family conditions. We did not experience any war. We had our compulsory army service, and we did have our stay at boarding school, but this did not prepare me for the conditions I encountered here."
A Happy Death -- Rumors BoyleSports would purchase 32Red's BetDirect operation were put to rest to today as Daniel O'Mahoney, chief executive of the Irish operator, said, "We will not be buying BetDirect." The announcement came on the publication of the company's full-year results.
Quoteworthy -- "I think it won't be very long--I think it may be five years, which, you know, in the scale of business, is not very long, before we see regulated gaming in the United States and some of the other countries where it's maybe gray or not legal today. When that happens, I think there's going to be a natural consolidation of terrestrial gaming and Internet gaming. We didn't see that happen in the world of books, with Amazon and Barnes & Noble; we didn't see it in the world of auctions with eBay and Sotheby's; but I do think that we'll see it in Internet gaming because I think that the terrestrial companies will need to have an Internet offering. They'll need to rely on those who do it best, those who have the databases, the infrastructure, the marketing skill, etc., to do it."
- From PartyGaming Chief Executive Mitch Garber earlier this month at the European I-Gaming Congress and Expo.
Stock Watch -- In Stockholm, Unibet was up SEK 3.50 to SEK 208.00, and in London, 888 was up 3.75p to 115.75, 32Red remained unchanged at 42p and Ladbrokes was up 4.25p to 419.25.