Spain has issued its licences

Last August, we announced that Spain would liberalise sports betting,  fixed odds and totepool horse racing bets, as well as bingo, poker, blackjack and roulette, starting from January 2012.
However, due to the excessive number of applications, the State’s authorities had to postpone the issuing of licences to 1 June, as we reported in this article.
Two weeks before that, the minister of internal affairs confirmed that the scheduled date would remain the same, as we mentioned in this other article.
Thus, as agreed, on 1 June, the Spanish regulator issued 277 licenses – of which 91 are “general” and 186 are “unique” –  to 53 operators.
At the moment, the allocation of 3 general licences and 5 unique licences claimed by two groups are still pending.
Moreover, two applications were rejected.
Eventually, on 5 June the Spanish market was officially liberalised.
On this date, the regulating authority once more stated that operators continuing to offer their services without licence would face severe penalties, which may amount to as much as a 50 million euros fine, as well as the closure of the relevant website.