2016 a Successful Year for the ECA

Fighting illegal gambling remains a key priority for the ECA.

Another year is behind us, and apparently it was a good year for the European Casino Association and the European gambling industry as a whole. The organisation which serves as a representative of all national casino associations and individual operators in Europe announced that it will continue to work on the promotion of the industry in the upcoming year.

This year, ECA accepted San Marino and Montenegro as it newest members and it now represents about 900 casinos located throughout 26 different European countries. Or to put it in another perspective, the ECA now represents more than 70,000 workers from all over Europe.

ECA Chairman Satisfied with the Results

The current Chairman of ECA is Per Jaldung who is also the head of Casino Cosmopol, an organisation that operates four national casinos in Sweden. 2016 has generally been a good year for casino and other gambling operators in Sweden. Jaldung stated that the year has been great, both for his company, but also for the ECA and Europe as a whole. ECA pledges to keep fighting illegal gambling in an attempt to protect the business of the operators who operate in accordance with the law.

ECA published a paper on the issue of illegal gambling and made a request to the European Commission and its lawmakers, asking them to take a more hands-on approach regarding this important issues. The ECA has also proposed several specific measures like IP blocking, creation of black and white lists with the aim to inform players which casinos are reliable and which aren’t, as well as few other tools.

ECA will continue promoting the European casino industry, its members and organise interesting events, such as the annual European Dealer Championship. This event has been organised by the ECA since 2007 and its goal is to bring the best European dealers in one place, in order to find out who is the ultimate dealer in Europe.

This year’s event was held in Breda at the popular Holland Casino and Ray de Rozario won the European Dealer of the Year award which came with a handy cash prize worth €3,000. The 2017 European Dealer Championship will be held at the amazing Hippodrome Casino in London.

The Goals for 2017 Are Set

ECA also held its regular board meeting where the organisations primary goals for 2017 were set. ECA aims to remain a partner to all EU institutions and plans on providing direct input that is going to help law- and policymakers reach better decisions on hot issues such as tackling illegal gambling, anti-money laundering laws and online gambling legislation.

ECA Chairman reminded everyone that land-based casinos can provide significant business opportunities for taxi companies, construction companies, as well as restaurants, hotels, bars and other related companies.

This year ECA revealed that it has sealed a partnership with the American Gaming Association. The partnership was inspired by the global nature of illegal gambling and the two bodies will cooperate in an attempt to develop and implement the best practices that will help in the struggle against money laundering and other fraudulent activities.