“The reorganization of the online and physical gaming sectors must necessarily take place at the same time”. This is what he declared Geronimo Cardia (in the photo), president of Acadi-Confcommercio, during the press conference at the Chamber of Deputies “Game: one market, one reorganization”, promoted and organized by the Milton Friedman Institute.
For the first time, most of the trade associations representing the legal gaming sector in Italy (ACADI, SAPAR, ASTRO, EGP-FIPE, Logico and ACMI) presented themselves united and compact to denounce the risks faced by the sector if the Government does not adopt correct and uniform regulatory and economic policies, simultaneously reforming the rules that affect the entire sector and not just some segments of the same market, thus generating disparities between the different products and segments of the same and also impacting asymmetrically on health policy of user protection.
The position of the Associations is clear: giving priority to the reorganization of online and postponing that of the territory means to further incentivize the transfer of the demand for gaming online to the detriment of distribution in the territory, mainly compromising the generalist network that deals with distribution of the devices but above all causing a significant damage to the main constitutional interests which are the prerequisite for the existence of the sector itself.
“For over a decade the cash gaming market has suffered from fragmented and partial interventions – Cardia reiterated -, regional expulsion distance meters, limitations of stringent municipal timetables, tax increases have essentially and mainly affected only one and not all types of gaming of the territory and certainly not the same types of games distributed on the online channel. A political approach that has had negative impacts both on public interest objectives, such as legality and treasury, but also on businesses and workers in the sector, as well as on the primary interest of combating gambling disorder".
“The physical network generates very respectable numbers: 80% of regulated gaming spending, 90% of tax revenue, over 95% of national employment in the sector, more than 140.000 people including merchants, distributors, small and medium-sized gaming enterprises. equipment management, technology producers and commercial and administrative staff – Cardia further underlined -. Therefore, dealing with the "reorganization" of remote gaming before that of retail means reducing the overall revenue of the sector, the protection of legality in the territory, the protection of the player, the levels of employment and it also means suffocating small and medium-sized businesses. Furthermore, for adequate protection of the user, for a concrete all-round fight against gambling disorder, the Unified Conference between the State and the Regions for the Reorganization will necessarily have to evaluate all the distribution verticals of the different types of games both in the territory and of online".
“And in any case to speed up operations, in the meantime the institutions could make ad adiuvandum interventions in disputes to denounce the inconsistencies of the partial and prohibitionist provisions currently existing which in all of this prevent tenders from being held”, concluded Cardia.
