Spain Starts Accepting Shared iPoker License Applications

Back in July, France, Italy, Spain and Portugal stated that they had reached a landmark agreement to share poker players across a shared European network, with the project expected to take place sometime during the early part of 2018.
Following the exciting development, the Spanish regulator has now announced that a new window of opportunity has opened up for operators to apply for online gambling licenses in the country, and as Sacha Michaud, President of Jdigital, explains:
“In this new window of licensing, we estimate that approximately 10 new operators will join in addition to the 52 that already exist in the Spanish market.”
Furthermore, the process has been extended for a year in order to enable more companies to enter the sector, which according to Jdigital should generate an additional €20 million over the period. Amongst the many companies that will now be lining up to apply for a license will be Winamax, with the operator eager to extend its poker product to Spain in order to compliment the ones it already holds in both France and Italy.
Similarly, Casino Barcelona shifted its operation over to iPoker Network Spain in November in anticipation of the shared liquidity agreement, with the brand currently servicing more than 600 cash game players located in France, Italy and Spain.
Other gambling companies also expected to apply for a poker license in Spain includes the likes of William Hill, Betclic, Paddy Power, Eurobet, and Sisal. Meanwhile, 888poker, iPoker, partypoker and PokerStars have already been offering regulated online poker in Spain.
In related news, France granted its first shared poker liquidity license earlier this month, with PokerStars the beneficiary. Thus far, the brand is the only one to already have a presence across all four countries. However, PokerStars also had to agree to restrict its operation on the network to just these countries, and not make its product available to players outside of these jurisdictions.