Italy’s government has been warned not to proceed with the ‘reorganisation decree of online gambling’ as proposed by the Ministry of the Economy and Finance (MEF).
The demand was made by the Italian online gambling trade association Logico, hosting a press conference last week, expressing ‘unified concerns’ about key proposals endorsed by MEF to overhaul Italy’s stagnant online gambling laws.
Logico President Moreno Marasco
The trade body welcomes MEF’s preliminary decree of amendments and resolutions, which will provide the first regulatory evaluation of Italian online gambling since the market’s authorisation in 2011.
However, conflicts have surfaced over MEF’s plans to overhaul Italian online gambling concessions, in which the Ministry has proposed applying a €7m authorisation fee for each licence.
The proposed fee reflects a 35-fold increase in standard fees of €200,000 charged since 2018.
Logico expressed concerns about MEF purposely stifling Italian online gambling’s competition as “participation in the online bidding process is expected to be limited to no more than 20 concessionaires compared to the existing 83, resulting in excessively reduced competition.”
“The first 20 years of the Italian gaming system have defined the characteristics of the supply chains, consisting of a few hundred companies, about 70 in the online segment, employing more than 150,000 workers,” Geronimo Cardia, President of Acadi, Italy’s Association for slot machine vendors.
“These companies are an asset for the industry that needs to be safeguarded against imprudent decisions regarding market access conditions that would immediately disrupt the current balance for both online offerings and the outlook for the retail circuit.”
MEF endorsed the €7m fee, stating that it reflected the changed dynamics of Italian online gambling since 2011 as the market is dominated by the conglomerates of SNAI, Flutter Entertainment, Lottomatica, Entain, and SKS365.
