Operating in Italy: la dolce vita
New gambling laws make Italy the European egaming market of choice, argues Giulio Coraggio, senior associate at the Rome office of international law firm Lovells - but you'll have to play by them to win.
IN RECENT YEARS ITALY has been one of the fastest growing gaming markets in the world, and is currently the biggest gaming market in Europe in terms of turnover.
This considerable growth has been due to factors including allowing any operator that meets the necessary requirements to obtain an Italian gaming license (abolishing the restrictions of the past); new clearer, more transparent laws allowing operators to better plan their investments; and the new approach taken by the Italian Government, which now sees the gaming market as a source of substantial tax proceeds and therefore encourages the introduction of different types of games.
In particular, the online gaming sector in 2007 saw the launch of skill games, which proved enormously success in 2008 and 2009 with the entrance of leading foreign operators that implemented very aggressive marketing campaigns, especially for online poker.
Operators remain restricted in that skill games can currently be offered to players only through tournament and solitaire modalities.
However this scenario is to change in coming months, with the Italian gaming authority having already issued the first draft of the rules governing online cash games and casino games that are expected to come into effect in March next year. Under the new rules, operators will soon be entitled to offer through their Italian websites all the type of games currently available on their dot com sites.
The opportunity will be open only to those operators with an Italian gaming license, since not only does Italian criminal law prohibit the offer of games to Italian residents without an Italian gaming license, but Italian ISPs are obliged to implement filters blocking the access to non-licensed websites by Italian residents.
If operators want to enjoy the benefits of the Italian gaming market, they should play by the rules. But those rules offer plenty of spoils for everybody.
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