Holland Casino witnessed an 83 percent fall in net profits last year as the combination of economic recession, a new smoking ban, tax reforms and increased competition from internet gambling battered the monopoly operator.

The Hellenic Casino Association has become the latest organisation to lobby for its own members to receive extensions to their licences to allow them to expand their operations into the online sphere. The move comes after the European Casino Association (ECA) said it would be allocating more lobbying resources to the ‘licence plus’ issue at an EU level.

A sell-off of state-owned Holland Casino was debated in the Dutch parliament this week, but with observers believing that outcome highly unlikely, the debate proved more interesting for its hints on how the government may choose to regulate their gambling industry in the aftermath of the ECJ’s ‘Bwin Liga’ verdict.

The Dutch Senate yesterday voted down proposals that would have granted the state-run operator Holland Casinos a three-year exclusive license to operate internet gaming in the Netherlands. The proposal was rejected by a narrow margin, but the outcome nevertheless sparked celebration among private gambling operators.

An advisory committee has been formed to assess whether the Dutch government should revisit plans to extend Holland Casino’s gaming monopoly to the internet, as upcoming hearings on cases involving Betfair and Ladbrokes put Holland next in line for ECJ scrutiny.

Revived proposals by the Dutch Ministry of Justice to introduce payments blocking measures against non-licensed online gambling operators have been met with approval by Holland’s state sanctioned operators, who nevertheless say they have not lobbied for the change.

The UK government has denied reports that it is preparing to send a delegation to Holland to discuss the Dutch policy on online gambling amid indications that Barclays has now followed RBS in restricting payments emanating from the country.

As part of a sweeping report on the Dutch gambling sector, Holland’s minister for justice Ernst Hirsch Ballin has told MPs that a ‘black list’ of illegal gambling websites will be circulated to Dutch banks by March, bringing into effect a ban on the processing of internet gambling payments in the country ahead of a possible wider shakeup of Holland’s gambling regime later this year.

Casino revenues across Europe declined 9 percent last year, the chairman of the European Casino Association (ECA) has announced, as the knock-on effects of the financial crisis and newly imposed smoking bans in several countries hit operators across the continent.

In the wake of the ECJ's Bwin Liga decision, Advocate General Bot recently released his opinion on cases involving the challenges to Dutch sports betting restrictions launched by the UK’s Betfair and Ladbrokes.