In every industry - the AS.TRO association writes today - "compliance with the rules" is a cost, most of the time involving an "objective" increase in the "cost itself" of the good or service, or rather an "objective" reduction of the revenues of the "master". Fiscal loyalty, contribution loyalty, adherence to the canons of safety and administrative and productive transparency (also towards users/customers/consumers) are all processes that "cost" but which "in return" provide that indispensable social return connected to the constitutional purpose of the business activity, which, in Italy, does not boast a "Third Worldist" settlement right, but the freedom of exercise for the purpose of progress of the country.
Having said this, and therefore banning any "whining" connected to how expensive it is, in the Italian market, to compete with those who can afford to violate the rules because they are able to absorb or bypass the sanctioning consequences, it is nevertheless necessary to highlight how the "concept of legality” in the gaming sector begins to go through a condition of “dangerous short circuit”.
The chronicles have been "drumming" for some time now that the places where bets (or quasi-bets) are collected without authorization are "protected" by criminal jurisprudence, are "protected" by community legislation that it is still not possible to bring into line with reality Italian law, are sponsored by foreign industrial realities for which the most attractive world segment of the betting market turns out to be our country (despite the architrave of the concession, and the whole legal-regulatory galaxy that oversees the preparation of a service of this nature).
In the face of this situation to which until recently people reacted thinking that "they were only problems of those who work as a betting dealer" (forgetting that in a system the criticality of a component always ends up putting "stress" the others too), adds to the bewilderment for the recent "proclamations" praising the jurisprudential pronouncements "salva promogames".
If this is the "happy" reality of the world of "unauthorized" gaming, which as such does not fall within the territorial restrictions imposed on legal gaming in Liguria, Trentino Alto Adige, Lombardy (and dozens of other so-called anti-slot municipalities ), the size of the "orthodox" companies begins to be characterized by "instability".
In fact, 50% of the infringements that regular operators are accused of today do not consider having caused damage to the legal assets protected by the violated rules, characterized only by formal contrasts between system findings and the permissible state of affairs.
The slot installed in a center that collects bets (even if unknown to the operator) is sanctioned to "discourage" the irregular collection of bets, but in reality it constitutes only a "heap", where the application of the pecuniary penalty is pursued without the prior warning to the operator of the actual condition of the location in which it operates (of which often only the holders of tax/judicial/administrative police powers can acquire evidence). The "system", therefore, does not aim to collaborate internally, but ends up weakening itself with the chimera of protecting itself.
It would be enough to "conceive" the regular operator as a "link in the system" (and therefore a subject responsible but not the recipient of the negative value) to optimize the purpose of the regulation. By notifying "the network" of checks that acquire evidence of an activity carried out without authorization in a point registered in the RIES list (with immediate remote blocking of devices), the set purpose would be achieved, without "inflicting" on "one's" operators .
The slot installed in an empty location but which in the system is still "full" of devices is ordered to be removed within 48 hours, and subsequently sanctioned if not handled electronically. "The system", therefore, does not pursue the alignment between its telematic evidence and the state of affairs, providing unwitting favor to those who do not promptly implement the processes that must lead the system to be the effective photograph of the state of the places.
Other types of examples can be coined by the device distribution segment, but there is no need to pursue an absolute completeness of listing, because the purpose of this note is not a "protest" for the sanctions, but a conceptual solicitation for a review of the "function" of the sanction.
In a reality in which irregular gaming already enjoys a regulatory system that is unsuitable for ousting it from the market, the "regular gaming" circuit should pursue a logic of "self-protection" that can protect "its operators" from situations in which " fall", selecting those who "adapt" to the principle of collaboration and expelling those who "row against".
In the last 30 years of republican history (from 1981 to today) the pecuniary sanction was conceived as an "additional subsidy" compared to the tax levy, disguising as bureaucracy what cannot be called "tax-tax-contribution". With the sanction, what the "withdrawal" fails to satisfy is integrated.
Public gaming, therefore, is a galaxy that up until now has aligned itself with this practice, but which today can no longer afford to comply with a management standard that risks causing it to implode.
If the "system" does not understand that a 3.000 euro fine applied to a lawful and authorized slot is equivalent to the company's net revenue from 18 months of running "that device", and does not acknowledge the fact that the "unauthorized" alternative ” is assuming contours of “arrogance” such as to exhaust the correct operator, it will be impossible to maintain internally a “solidity” such as to withstand the challenge.
In fact, public gaming, whether one likes it or not, is based only on the logic of the system and if there is no internal protection philosophy that aims to be of help and service to the observance of the rules, it will end up handing over the market to those who rules can do without.
