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The upcoming new Italian online gaming licenses created an uncertainty on what new entrants shall be doing now.
The new online gaming licenses
As already mentioned in a previous post, according to the current draft of the budget law, 120 Italian remote gaming licenses will be awarded in mid-2016. This scenario has created a consiederable excitement in operators that had been kept outside the Italian online gaming market for years. This was just because the regulator was not making available new licenses. Hopefully, such long waiting is now over and it will be possible shortly to apply for an Italian remote gaming license.
What to do NOW?
I have been approach by a good number of operators willing to enter into the Italian online gaming market and the usual question is about what shall be done NOW.
I have already published the FAQs which clarify the main features of new remote gaming licenses and the applicable obligations. However, during these months prior to the opening of the application window, I believe that it is is crucial to work on the technological development of the platform in order to make it compliant with Italian gambling regulations.
Indeed, Italian licensed platforms need to be remotely linked with the servers of the regulator. Each player registration, each transaction and any gaming activity is monitored in real time. Such link occurs through the exchange of a number of messages between the operator’s platform and the regulator’s servers run by Sogei according to protocols of communication that change depending on the type of game involved and in relation to the management of the gaming account system.
The development of the protocols of communication as well as the certification of the platform and games and their approval by the regulator take usually 4 to 6 months. As a consequence, operators willing to launch their Italian platform in 2016 shall already start the setting up.
At the same time it is recommendable to start in parallel the arrangement of the documentation to be submitted to the regulator. This is indeed quite burdensome and especially for foreign operators will require notarised and apostilled documents of which a certified Italian translation is needed.
