Reordering online games, DL approved. Cardia (ACADI): “Serious consequences for legality and user protection”

“The Council of Ministers has definitively approved the legislative decree for the reorganization of the online gaming sector. In this regard we asked for it with various associations at the end of 2023 and during the hearings in Parliament in the first months of 2024: the reorganization must actually be unitary and comprehensive for the entire public gaming sector, just as imagined by the legislator of the Delegation Law" , so he comments Geronimo Cardia, President of ACADI (Association of public gaming dealers).
“In the discussions it was explained to us that one of the reasons why priority was given to online is that the reorganization of the territory would require more time because it must pass through the State-Regions Conference, to overcome the problem of the territorial question, for overcoming the expulsion distance meters and the too stringent time limitations currently foreseen for some types of products (no one would participate in the races knowing that they would not actually be allowed to put the assigned points on the ground)".
“The 4 associations in the common documents filed in the Commissions have said it clearly: the Conference called to resolve the territorial question, which mainly concerns only the machines, but also in some ways betting and bingo, must be very clear that the evaluations on the measures of fight against gambling disorder, currently concentrated only on a few types of games, must deal with their actual effectiveness, with the comorbidity of the disorder and with the continuous transfer of gaming demand to types of games not affected by these measures of local legislation which, in fact, have proven to be selectively expulsive, discriminatory, inorganic and, as such, ineffective unless they defeat the purpose. At the same time, the consequent shifts in gaming demand towards types of games not limited by local measures, which moreover present a lower fiscal leverage compared to spending, are capable of putting at risk the invariance of revenue which is instead a prerequisite for implementation of the entire reorganization. In other words, what matters today is that the reorganization of the territory must begin to see the light as soon as possible so as not to allow an increase in the treatment gap between almost always the same products from different distribution systems. And this not only to protect the integrity of the companies and jobs involved in the supply chains of the local sector but, as mentioned, even beforehand for the effective protection of the user, for the maintenance of legality safeguards in the territories and for the maintenance of tax revenue levels”, concludes Cardia.