NEW YORK (Associated Press) – The American Gaming Association, a trade group that represents the casino industry, spent $1.7 million in 2007 to lobby the federal government on Internet gambling legislation.
The trade group, which opposes legislative proposals that would preempt state authority to regulate gambling, spent $800,000 on lobbying in the second half of the [...]

The first week of February saw the Swedish Supreme Court order the Court of Appeal to test the compatibility of the country’s lottery law with existing European law.
Daily newspapers Aftonbladet and Expressen have been battling for years to overturn a District Court ruling which barred them from accepting foreign gaming ads.
The ruling by the Supreme [...]

Toward the end of January 2008, Finnish Minister Stefan Wallin said that the government should run an online poker service in order to more tightly control the market and protect its citizens.
This came one week after a government-commissioned academic report recommendation that the government could force financial institutions or online poker sites to refund the [...]

Early February saw another about-turn among authorities as Dutch Minister of Justice Hirsch Ballin postponed the scheduled Senate vote on granting a temporary but exclusive licence to state-run Holland Casino, which would allow it to offer online gaming, including poker.
Reports suggest that Minister Ballin feared the bill would be defeated after the European Commission moved [...]

Win2day.at is the new state-run (by Casinos Austria) gaming website which includes a poker platform powered by Sweden’s Svenska Spel. Launched in early February, the theory behind the room was to emulate the perceived success of the Swedish state-run monopoly model, but is likely to attract the ire of the European Commission if its authorities [...]

On Jan. 1, 2008, the brokering of any form of online games, including poker, was banned. The new rules allowed the German states to order banks and financial institutions from transacting with websites offering online wagering (similar to what the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act does in the U.S.) and to order Internet service providers [...]

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the French have long paddled their own canoes in relation to online gaming, banning advertising, arresting executives of bookmakers, and generally taking a hard-line.
Two executives from Austrian online gambling firm bwin.com, formerly known as Bet and Win, have been arrested in France in relation to alleged violations of French gaming laws, prompting yet [...]

French Open organizers filed suit yesterday in a bid to ban online gambling companies from offering bets on the Grand Slam tournament.
The complaint filed in courts in Liege in eastern Belgium and in Paris claims that Internet betting companies stain the reputation of the clay-court championship at Roland Garros.
“There is urgency to act because sporting [...]

Online Sportsbook, casino and poker, Bodog, one of the worlds largest in the internet gambling industry, has officially applied for a UK operating license even though their U.S. operations have come under extreme scrutiny concerning the legality of their activities.
Bodog’s founder Calvin Ayre admits Bodog took bets from US players but also quickly points out [...]

The National Basketball Association (NBA) paid McGuirewoods Consulting $280,000 in the second half of 2007, passing a total of $330,000 to the lobbying firm for the year.The firm lobbied Congress on federal decency guidelines, according to a form filed online Monday by the Senate’s public records office. NBA also lobbied to preserve the ban on [...]