PATNER EDITORIAL
Towards the reorganization of the online gaming in Italy: what the new statute says ITALY’S DRAFT LEGISLATIVE DEGREE ON THE REORGANIZATION OF GAMING RAISED EYEBROWS WHEN IT WAS PUBLISHED. LUDOVICO CALVI LOOKS AT WHAT IT CONTAINS
T he Italian Council of Ministers has given its final approval to the draft Legislative Decree “Provisions on the reorganization of the gaming sector, starting with online gaming” (the Decree). With the final approval of the Legislative Decree, the Government is aiming to rationalize and update the online gaming regulatory framework, increase the value of the online concessions to be awarded, and bring them to the highest market standards. The whole online gaming ecosystem will be regulated with more modern and exacting principles. The Legislative Decree focuses essentially on new and more rigorous standards of legality, responsibility and transparency. It then regulates the new online gaming concession framework, directly managed by the Italian gaming regulator, ADM, the Italian Customs and Monopolies Agency. The Decree includes provisions regarding the maximum duration of an online gaming concession, set at nine years. The cost of a license is set at €7 million, and the specific requirements and conditions interested parties participating in the public
tender must comply with are also defined.
As well as online gaming, the Decree contains new provisions over public tenders for the Lotto (expiring in November 2025) which will see it go from an auction base of €700 million to €1 billion, and Scratch and Win (expiring in September 2028). For online gaming, in particular, there are three fees in place which future online gaming concessionaires will face and the amounts included in the Decree have been increased significantly. The ‘one-off concession fee’ goes up from the previous €250,000 to €7 million (an increase of 2,800 percent); there is an ‘annual fee’ equivalent to three percent of the Gross Gaming Revenue (GGR) (double that of previous years); and an ‘annual fee’ equal to 0.2 percent of concessionaires’ GGR which is dedicated to investments in information and communication campaigns to prevent and treat gaming addiction. The Decree also puts an end to the use of cash for online games. In fact, those who wish to top up their gaming accounts in retail locations with amounts above €100 in cash will be obliged
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IMGL MAGAZINE | APRIL 2024
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