Tassos Kaburakis and I recently had the chance to collaborate on a research project looking at gambling in the EU. Our findings were just published in the new issue of Business Law International. The abstract is below. Our follow-up piece focuses on the US exclusively and is slated for publication later this year. Among other things, our US-specific article looks at PASPA on the statute's 20th anniversary.
Using law and policy as a sustainable competitive advantage source is a recent research stream. This paper illustrates how legal and policy research contributes to firms’ strategy in the regulated gambling industry, defined by legislation and jurisprudence. The gambling sector has been a microcosm of European integration and harmonisation challenges, as well as promising opportunities. Research on European Court of Justice case law in the period 1990-2010 and on recent policy developments yields significant findings for firms wishing to compete in the gambling industry, in which entry barriers have traditionally been high due to restrictive regulation. Following the latest European Court of Justice decisions in September 2010 and the ensuing policy impact across Europe, gambling operators are prudent to invest in litigation, lobbying, continuous legal and policy monitoring, and establishment of regional gambling sites in jurisdictions they would have been preempted from pursuing heretofore.