Croatian Market Update at CEEGC 2017 Budapest with Hrvoje Vincetic

Hrvoje Vincetic (Managing Director of Casino Adriatic Croatia) is one of the keynote speakers at the second edition of the Central and Eastern European Gaming Conference.

Hrvoje Vincetic (Managing Director of Casino Adriatic Croatia) will be one of keynote speakers at the second edition of the Central and Eastern European Gaming Conference. An event which is going to take place between 19-20 September at the Kempinski Corvinus Budapest.   Croatia’s first licensed online poker room – SuperSport – was launched at the beginning of 2017, according to initial information, has so far beaten traffic expectations. This had to happen somehow, despite online poker regulation being on the books for years in Croatia.   The website was expected to go live in mid-2016 but owners decided to delay launch for regulatory reasons. Under Croatia’s gambling laws, a license for the operation of online poker is valid from January 1 to December 31. An operator must also pay a licensing fee of around €600,000 in order to be given the nod to operate in the country. In other words, SuperSport would have had to pay the same amount for a license that would have been valid for several months only, if it had insisted on launching sometime in mid-2016.   Croatia became the 28th member state of the European Union in July 2013. Shortly after, the country announced that it would amend its existing gambling laws in order to make them compliant with EU requirements. The proposed changes were approved by the European Commission in November 2014. However, not much has happened in the country since then.   Sports betting, casino, poker, bingo, and lottery are the products that are currently regulated by the local market. Apart from lottery services, which are provided by the state monopoly, literally any operator can apply for a license for the operation of any of the other gambling services. The Croatian market will be discussed during the Balkans panel, which is titled as “The Balkan Gambling Opportunity” and scheduled to be held between 9:30 – 10:30 AM (Budapest Local Time)  during the second edition of the Central and Eastern European Gaming Conference Budapest. “Croatia as an attractive investment for gambling operators in the Balkans” is the title of Hrvoje Vincetic’s presentation and the topic is awaited by numerous operators that have shown their interest to attending the event.