Share This Article
New casinos might be established in Italy creating new opportunities also for private investors in a country where at the moment there are only 4 casinos.
The current scenario for casinos in Italy
At the moment there are only 4 casinos in Italy that are Venice, Sanremo, Saint Vincent and Campione d’Italia. All these casinos have been established through a primary law which introduced exemptions to criminal laws prohibiting gambling activities. All these casinos are fully owned by the local municipalities and it is prohibited to open new casinos without a new primary law, save for the video lottery gaming halls.
The current negative financial situation of those casinos and the economic downturn led though the local municipalities to attempt a privatization of those casinos. And in particular, as already discussed, there have been attempts to privatizing the Venice casino that have failed so far.
The proposal on new casinos
In order to find a remedy to the current crisis of Italian casinos, the Vice Minister of Finance in charge of the gambling sector now declared that he is willing to support the setting up of “branches” of Italian casinos in other regions.
An issue for Italian casinos is indeed the lack of any economy of scale since they have to limit their operations to their casino. But, according to the Vice Minister, the establishment of additional casinos through branches of main casino might be financially beneficial for the casinos.
What opportunities for investors?
The view declared by the Vice Minister is that casinos shall remain in full or in part owned by the State. But he did not rule out the possibility that the “management” such casinos might be outsourced to companies that have a better understanding of the sector and might be in a better position to run them.
This might reppresent an interesting opportunity for companies with a consolidated experience in running casinos worldwide which might replicate their model of business in Italy now relying on a larger number of casinos rather than just 4 of them in the most beautiful country in the world!
@GiulioCoraggio
