BELGIUM Law and Practice Contributed by: Pieter Paepe and Christoph de Preter, EDSON
Bars with a C licence (class III gaming establishments) can have a maximum of two gaming machines (bingo and one-ball) and two “automatic gaming machines with very limited stakes” (also called “Article 3.3 gam- ing machines”). A recent legislative proposal intends to change the above numbers, by limiting the over- all number of gaming machines (bingo, one-ball or machines with very limited stakes) to two (as opposed to the previous four). Lotteries Article 1 of the Lotteries Act (see 3.1 Key Legisla- tion ) states that all lotteries are prohibited. There are nevertheless certain limited exceptions to this gen- eral prohibition. Furthermore, the National Lottery has been granted a monopoly on offering public lotteries, which should be offered “in the general interest and in accordance with commercial methods”. The regulatory framework for games of chance and lotteries in Belgium consists of a number of laws: • the Gaming Act – this is the most important law for private operators and was amended in 2010 to adopt a strict licensing regime for online games of chance and betting; • the Federal Act of 31 December 1851 regarding lotteries (the “Lotteries Act”); and • the Federal Act of 19 April 2002 to rationalise the functioning and the management of the National Lottery (the “National Lottery Act”). 3.2 Definition of Gambling Article 2, Section 1 of the Gaming Act broadly defines a game of chance as “any game in which a stake of any kind is committed ‒ the consequence of which is either loss of the stake by at least one of the players or a gain of any kind for at least one of the players or organisers of the game ‒ and in which chance is an even ancillary element in the course of the game, the designation of the winner or the determination of the gain”. 3. Legislative Framework 3.1 Key Legislation
A “game of chance” therefore requires the presence of: • a game; • a minimal degree of chance that determines the outcome of the game, as well as the winner or the gain. Article 2, Section 5 of the Gaming Act defines a “bet” as a specific subcategory of games of chance “in which each player wagers an amount that generates a gain or loss that does not depend on an act of the player, but depends on the realisation of an uncertain event happening without the intervention of the play- ers”. The Gaming Act explicitly distinguishes between: • “totaliser” or mutual betting, in which “an organiser acts as the intermediary between various play- ers who play against each other and the bets are collected and distributed among the winners, after deduction of a percentage to cover the taxes on gambling and betting, the costs of the organisers and the profits they gain from it”; and • a stake of any kind; • a loss or a gain; and • “odds betting”, in which “a player places stakes on the result of a certain act, the amount of earnings is determined according to fixed or conventional odds, and the organiser is personally liable to pay winnings to players”. Free games do not qualify as games of chance under the Gaming Act, as they do not involve any kind of stake. The Gaming Act explicitly excludes the following games of chance from its scope of application: • sports games; • games in which the player can only win up to five additional plays (free of charge); and • the following games with very limited stakes that can only result in a gain of low monetary value: (a) card, board and parlour games played outside class I and II gaming establishments; (b) games operated in attraction parks or by industrial fairgrounds ‒ for example, in connec- tion with carnivals and trade fairs; or
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