Recent announcements seem to be targeted at making the move as close to Sept 16th as possible, the cut off date for applicants to be granted continuation licences. I mentioned in another thread that for those casinos who have yet to tell players they are pulling out, but that we know are (Fortune lounge brands for example), they will cut players off by the 16th rather than hang on to the bitter end on the 30th. My reasoning is that before the 16th, they still have time to put in a late application, and so are not doing anything wrong by "continuing" to serve UK players. However, if they haven't applied by then, it's clear that they will have to cease serving UK players for a period even if they do apply after this date. This leads them into a "grey area", especially if they have no intention of applying, so to stay in the clear legally, yet serve UK players for as long as possible, the 16th is a key date.
After all, they may want to change their minds later on after the dust has settled, and will not want any of their past behaviour to derail their chances of being approved.
This "hard" 16th deadline seems to be showing up for Micrgaming sites. This is a bit speculative but we know that Microgaming is also applying for a licence with its remaining UK sites and that in their application they need to detail their whole operation including which partners are UK facing and which not. This hard deadline for the partners is likely a Microgaming requirement. Speculative but there is some logic to it.