Belgium online casinos will have to be modernized

Belgium online casinos should exempt sites from the sports betting section and other products unusual for slots, the Belgian Constitutional Court decided.

Belgium online casinos, commenting on the verdict of the Constitutional Court, stated: no innovations are visible. In fact, the requirements of the original document, which worked since 2019, are repeated, which also required the separation of products across different platforms.

For example, the division of slots and sports bets into separate domain sites was discussed by the judges back in 2018. Then, substantiating the position, the constitutionalists explained: the legislation should treat terrestrial and virtual resources in the same way. Today's real casinos are forbidden to mix games with bets - they need separate buildings, remote from each other.

Mixing games with bets on one domain name was allowed until 2017. However, there were casinos that saw a competitive advantage in such a combination of heterogeneous entertainment. In the then address, the institutions explained to the legislators that the visibility of such sites is much better than the sites focused on the separate provision of services.

The Constitutional Court heard the voice of gambling establishments and ruled that the law requires modernization. However, the opposition of the reforms was the Council of Ministers, which secured the strong opinion of the "European League of Gambling Entertainment".

The government then, relying on the current law, accused the judges of insufficient qualifications, stating: casino operators of a certain class can offer several varieties of land-based gambling, collected in one place, which contradicts the logic of judges prohibiting it on the Internet.

However, the long-term struggle of legislators with performers talking about URL-addresses, domains ended with the victory of the Constitutional Court, which proved the fallacy of the law that allowed mixing dissimilar gambling.