“In our sector, the very high need for regulation somehow limits the company's autonomy in being able to adopt certain solutions that go in the direction of innovation. For this reason we believe it is essential that the majority shareholder, not only financial but also in governance, which is the State, can imagine the future of the sector offering entertainment with cash prizes. If the technological change of the tableware in a room is not subject to regulation, why is the change in the offer of the main product - let's think of a bingo card? Emmanuel Cangianelli, president of EGP-Fipe, spoke today at the conference entitled "Gaming Halls: entertainment, sociality and responsible consumption" organized by EGP-Fipe and which was held during Host, the world fair dedicated to the catering and hospitality sector hospitality.
“The regulator – continued the EGP-Fipe president – generally follows the real market, if it follows it from a little too far away, as in other sectors and in ours in particular, the real market insinuates itself, inserts itself into the relationships between the businesses and the consumer. This is a bit like what happened to taxi apps which at a certain point were not regulated, then some had rules and others not. Regulation, at this moment, is the key to any hypothesis of development of the sector. Therefore our capacity for institutional representation, and that of the Confcommercio system and other associative entities, will be important. We believe that leisure consumption will change in line with many other sectors. They will be more instantaneous, short-lived, they will be increasingly digitalized until they are almost totally digital.
If we think about the evolution of entertainment venues, for example, in Northern Europe we also think that in the future we must and can invest more in specialized distribution also in the gaming sector. This means that there are the necessary conditions for investing. To invest you require certainty over time and years, certainty which then has to do with the relationship with the staff because not only are you investing in technologies - which will then be amortized - but you are investing in people. Ours is a sector in which all companies must train their staff also for regulatory needs. I am thinking not only of the more traditional services such as food processing, but also of the provisions for combating compulsive gambling and the methods of communication and direction of compulsive gamblers towards the forms of support and help provided.
This entails the need for planning. Let's think of the training initiatives of regions such as Tuscany and Puglia, of all those in which Confcommercio was involved, for example.
Our sector, which falls within the financial scope of the MEF and the Customs and Monopolies Agency, now has the opportunity to rewrite some main rules and we hope that work is being done on this. We are confident that politics can seize this opportunity after twenty years of extensive regulation and emergence of many areas of the sector".
