The new Austrian state site runs on the Boss Media network and began taking registrations yesterday morning, both for real-money play and four special €5,000 introductory freerolls available to Austrian citizens, an ad for which was prominently displayed on the site’s front page.

The online site also offers an extensive selection of lottery and casino games, all served up
under the auspices of Österreichische Lotterien GmbH, the official Austrian lottery, along with Casinos Austria, the other government agency authorized to offer online games of chance, and itself a majority owner in Österreichische Lotterien. Casinos Austria also advertises its land-based poker options on the site, including an upcoming 2008 Austrian poker tour. The site also includes how-to videos and other instructional offerings and upsells the game of poker, with early indications showing strong opening-day registration; well over 2,000 live players were noted as active on the site within 24 hours of its grand opening.

Worth watching in future months will be the Austrian government’s attitude toward privately run gaming companies, such as Bwin, which is one of Europe’s largest brands and is itself incorporated in Austria. Attempts to make win2day.at into an online monopoly for the Austrian market would run the risk of drawing European Union ire, as has happened recently with Sweden.

pokernews.com

Recent stories on YLE News and in Helsingin Sanomat, a major Finnish newspaper, reported that Finland’s Minister of Culture and Sport, Stefan Wallin, has called for a state-run online poker room. Any such state-run room would likely fall under the auspices of one of two state-run operations currently overseeing similar matters, either the state gaming monopoly, Veikkaus Oy, or the Finnish Slot Machine Association, Raha-automaattiyhdistys (RAY).


In a blog post, Wallin pointed to the profits made by Internet-based companies as justification for his proposal. “With the increase of online gambling, the number of problem players will just grow, while most of the profits flow to firms based in tax havens,” Wallin wrote. “A better solution would be to allow one of our national lawful operators, Veikkaus or RAY, to take the responsibility for Net poker.”

Officials for RAY and Veikkaus Oy were quick to support the concept. According to RAY’s communications director, Matti Hokkanen, “RAY, just like the government, has set the maintaining of this exclusive right in Finland as an important goal.” RAY currently has a market exclusive on land-based slot machines and casino activities in Finland.

However, one Finnish official quickly dismissed Wallin’s proposal. In an STT (Finnish news agency) report, government council member Kari Passo, from Finland’s Ministry of Social Affairs and Health, said, “Domestic games would simply make everything even easier for gaming addicts.” It was this Finnish agency that commissioned a widely reported ‘white paper’ last week that suggested voiding all online-gambling debts as one of several possible remedies for curbing ‘problem’ online gambling. A state-run room is also likely to come under international scrutiny, in the European Union and elsewhere.

pokernews.com