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With the football World Cup upcoming, it is time for the Italian sportsbetting market to look at what happened in the last 12 months in terms of gaming law changes and plan the next steps.
We are all very excited for the beginning of the football World Cup that hopefully will be very successful not only for our team, but also for the Italian sportsbetting market and operators’ marketing campaigns are ready to be launched, even if with some concerns.
The last months saw a considerable growth of the offering of events not included in the official schedule published by AAMS, the Italian gambling regulator, and the introduction of some new types of bets that had not been regulated by AAMS. This change was possible because of the coming into force of the regulations on the so called Palinsesto Complementare which allowed Italian licensed operators to offer not only the types of events and bets listed in the AAMS schedule, but also their own types of bets and events.
The goal is that operators will be able to offer on Italian licensed platforms the same types of bets and markets available on .COM platforms which should operate as a further incentive to players to switch from unlicensed to licensed platforms. The opening of the Italian sportsbetting market is gradually occurring because of some delays due to the formalities required for the approval of each type of bet and event.
Also, the growth of the market has been driven by the launch between the end of 2013 and the beginning of 2014 of bets on virtual events and betting exchange games. The former has already become very successful especially in betting shops due to Internet connection issues affecting online gaming. On the contrary, the latter is still an open question because of issues pertaining the sustainability of such market in absence – for the moment – of any liquidity sharing with other jurisdictions.
Further major changes for the Italian sportsbetting market are on their way through the Implementation of the so called delega fiscale decree which will impact on many different areas.
In particular, sportsbetting operators are awaiting changes in the taxation for fixed odds sports bets from a turnover based system to gross profit based taxes. This is something that looked quite close to happen at the end of 2013, but then the change in the government led to delays and the need to start further discussions with the new parties involved. However, the delega fiscale gives a massive opportunity to introduce such change.
Also, the taxation of further games and in particular those that were introduced at the early stages of the Italian gaming market such as numbering games and lotteries is excepted to change and more stringent measures will be introduced against the black market both online and land based including the potential introduction of a licensing regime for game suppliers.
Finally it is still unclear what measures will be adopted in relation to the location of gaming halls or betting shops and advertising, but the expectation are that the government will adopt the necessary measures before the end of the summer.
Operators shall keep an eye on the World Cup and an eye on the actions from the Government, and let’s hope that the Italian sportsbetting market will benefit from both.
We will see the future developments of the market and as usual, if you have questions on the matter, feel free to contact me, Giulio Coraggio to discuss. Also, if you want to receive my newsletter, please join my LinkedIn Group or my Facebook page. And follow me on Twitter, Google+ and become one of my friends on LinkedIn.
