AAMS appeal against Lottomatica lotto concession rejected
Court of Appeal rules operator's contract to provide lottery services to Italian market runs until 2016.
A court in Rome has rejected an appeal by Italian regulator AAMS against the awarding of the Italian lotto concession to Lottomatica, the company has announced.
The case dates back to 2005 when AAMS appealed to a Court of Arbitrators to challenge an arbitration committee’s ruling that Lottomatica’s contract to operate lotto games in Italy ended on 8 June 2016 and not 17 April 2012 as the regulator asserted. The court also confirmed that the contract had been awarded with a start date of 8 June 1998, for a duration of 18 years.
The court also declared that AAMS’ blocking UK operator Stanleybet from applying for a licence was inadmissible. This follows a ruling by the European Commission in February which declared that greater transparency was needed in Italy’s regulatory process and that it was illegal to block foreign operators from entering the market in order to protect current market leaders.
Lottomatica is currently appealing a 100m fine handed down by the Ministry of Finance’s audit department (Corte dei Conti) with AAMS’ support, part of a series of penalties totalling 2.5bn against Italy’s 10 gaming machine operators. The fines relate to the operators’ alleged failure to connect gaming machine terminals to a central monitoring network operated by the regulator.