British High Court Will Allow Super Casinos

The British High Court has dismissed a plea entered by the largest casino lobby in the United Kingdom. The plea was entered to stop the development of 17 large scale casinos that current casinos will not have the ability to compete against. The ruling by the British High Court leaves the door open for Britain's 2005 Gaming Act, which oversees the Super Casino and the others, to be implemented by September 1, 2007.

The plea before the High Court had been entered by the British Casinos Association (BCA), which represents the interests of 90% of all casinos located in the United Kingdom. The groups represented by the British Casinos Association are Gala Casinos, the Rank Group's Grosvenor Casinos, Genting's Stanley Casinos Group and the Harrahs owned London Clubs International. These four groups control 116 of the 138 casinos licensed in the United Kingdom.

The existing casinos that filed the plea with the High Court have been in operation for a number of years, Governed by the laws of the 1968 Gaming Act. These laws are largely prohibitive when compared to the 2005 Gaming Act, under which the new super casinos will operate.

One charge of the group's plea is that the new gaming act represents unfair competition. This is due to the fact that the new casinos will be much larger, grander and be able to offer a larger variety of gaming and non-gaming services than the existing casino properties. The British Casinos Association contends that the move effectively reduces existing casinos in the United Kingdom to having second class status, and will ultimately cripple their business operations.

Another aspect of the plea that was submitted by the British Casinos Association is that the Government, particularly Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell, did not conduct a formal consultation with existing casinos as to the impact that the new gaming act would have on existing businesses. The Government position is that Jowell did speak to casino authorities and took their concerns into consideration, a claim which casino owners and Democratic politicians in the United Kingdom claim is rubbish.