Italy could delay joining European poker liquidity pool until Q2 2018

Italy is set to delay its involvement in the online poker liquidity sharing pool it agreed to form along with France, Spain and Portugal back in July, EGR understands.

The shared pool was originally set to soft launch in December, but EGR understands Italy will not meet the deadline for technical implementation, with the country’s gaming regulator AAMS choosing to postpone its participation as a result of growing political opposition to pooled poker.

The French regulator Arjel is still pushing for the compact to go live as soon as possible, but Italian news outlet Agipronews has reported that Italy will not join the pact until the country’s 2018 general election is over in April.

“After a preliminary green light, it seems that AAMS is slowing down,” Christian Tirabassi, gaming consultant at Ficom Leisure, told EGR.

Specifically, Italian government officials have aired concerns that cross-market pooling could enable money laundering, as Italy’s online gambling regulations did not envisage such a pool existing and so do not set out specific regulations.

According to European gaming law journal Lexandgaming, Senator of the Democratic Party, Franco Mirabelli, challenged the Minister of Economy, Piercarlo Padoan in parliament in October, saying: “The opening to international liquidity on online poker is neither foreseen nor imposed by any regulatory source in Italy, neither of a legislative nature nor of a regulatory nature, and therefore opening the possibility of play between players of different nationalities appears be the result of an autonomous and discretionary choice.”

EGR also understands locally-licensed operators have been pushing back against shared liquidity with international firms more likely to benefit from shared player pools.

AAMS had not responded to an EGR request for comment at the time of publication.