Didier Dewyn and Torbjörn Ihre together (along with office manager Els De Witte) man the Brussels-based offices of the European Betting Association (EBA), the lobbying group for eight leading EU sports betting companies: Primebet, Unite, Intertops, Betandwin, Interwoven, Globet, Digit, Carmen, Digit, Wettenleip and Betbull.
Dewyn, 37, is secretary general for the EBA. He used to work as a business lawyer with Deloitte & Touche and is now the CEO of MrBookmaker.com and deputy CEO of Unibet.com. Ihre, 67, handles external affairs for the association. He is the president of EU lobbying group Eurotouch and previously headed Ericsson¹s EU affairs office in Brussels and prior to that in Washington. Both are clearly quite busy with their business endeavors, but they are likewise committed to fulfilling EBA's objectives.
EBA has been very active in lobbying and starting up court cases in an effort to open up the EU betting markets, and recent months have been hectic, with concurrent developments involving the EU decision on the Service Directive, scrutiny by the European Commission of gambling laws in seven EU states and the German Federal Constitutional Court's verdict on the state gambling monopoly taking place. What role does EBA play in all this? IGN seeks to clarify this and much more in this exclusive interview with the association's leading duo.
IGN: What exactly is EBA doing?
Didier Dewyn: EBA is an association of leading European sports betting operators and is a Brussels-based nonprofit association. It promotes the right under EU law for members based and licensed in one member state to promote their services in--and accept business from--all other EU member states.
IGN: Who else is involved?
DD: EBA's structure is the General Members Assembly, in which all members participate to discuss strategies and budget for EBA activities. For the operational decisions, the executive committee and its four members are responsible. Personal positions in the organization are held by Norbert Teufelberg of BAW Interactive Entertainment AG as chairman and me as secretary general.
IGN: EBA did not have such a lucky lobbying campaign concerning the EU Service Directive. What went wrong?
Torbjörn Ihre: It would have been catastrophic if EBA had not been lobbying the European Parliament intensively regarding gambling as part of the Service Directive. Without the lobbying of EBA, the parliamentarians would still be unaware of the large part of the gambling market that is covered by private operators and to a growing extent.
As we have explained in our press release about the exclusion of gambling from the scope of the Service Directive. We believe that the parliamentarians missed an opportunity to take the first step in creating an EU-wide harmonized gambling legislation, at least for remote gambling. We were very successful in reaching out to a great number of parliamentarians and explaining how the private betting industry is working. What is sad--almost tragic--is that the Commission's intention with including gambling in the Service Directive was lost in the debate. By including gambling, the Commission wanted to lay a possible ground for harmonization of gambling legislation in order to deal with social issues in an effective EU-wide way.
The Service Directive did not mean to liberalize the gambling market from one day to another. EBA and its cooperating partners will have to come back and explain this to the parliamentarians. How a resourceful organization like EL (European Lotteries) also could misread the Commission's proposal is to EBA inconceivable.
We must also realize that for most governments, the income from their gambling monopolies is an important contribution to the state finances. Many politicians are reluctant to rock that boat. So there we have an additional reason for the parliamentarians to vote for exclusion and by that believing having fended off the attack on the monopolies. Unfortunately, they managed to throw out the baby with the bath water at the same time.
IGN: Could EBA (and RGA*) not make a pact with other sectors concerning the Country of Origin Principle (COP), for instance with EICTA (the European Information & Communications Technology Industry Association)?
TI: EBA believes that at an early stage of the debate about the Service Directive that the COP would be one of the most controversial issues. It was soon abandoned by the Commission as well by the Council. The principle important to EBA members, the right to offer betting services on a cross-border basis, will now remain with the EU treaty. That is also the principle on which the Commission has now launched infringement procedures against seven member states.
IGN: European Lotteries' Tjeerd Veenstra voiced that the EBA is too optimistic concerning infringements. Starting up a procedure by the EU Commissioner does not automatically lead to a negative verdict.
TI: The first step in the infringement procedure is the analysis of the submitted complaint by the Commission legal services. In this analysis, the grounds for the complaints are really tested and if the complainant has a case, and only then, will the complaint go further. So, we have all the reasons to assume that the member states that receive a letter of formal notice must take a hard look at the way they award licenses for gambling.
They will probably find that it is impossible to combine a minimization of citizens' exposure to gambling with a maximization of government income from gambling. To EBA, it looks like the governments will fall between the two chairs they try to sit on at the same time.
IGN: There is no more promotion for the German ODDSET products. Will that lead to bankruptcy?
DD: Promotion, development of new gambling products and offering gambling services through a growing variety of channels are crucial measures for survival in the extremely competitive gambling market. What will happen to the individual operator as they change this mix is impossible to predict. Therefore, it is important that the German state realizes this and create a level playing field whereby private and state operators can coexist.
IGN: Will the EL change their Code of Conduct? For months and months the EL Web site's "Code of Practice" page has been blocked.
DD: If this is really the case (that the EL has closed down its Web site on Code of Practice), EBA has reasons to believe that the ambition to minimize hypocrisy was a dominant force for doing that.
IGN: What irritates you most in this industry, besides journalists?
TI: Hypocrisy!
IGN: What is your favorite pastime/passion?
DD: Bringing down monopolies!
*Remote Gambling Association, representing the world's largest and most well known remote gambling companies and providing the industry with a single voice on all the issues of importance to regulators, legislators and key decision makers around the world.