NEWS
How not to regulate gambling: tough lessons from two nations
Poland and Ukraine both imposed harsh restrictions – and may be regretting them
Ban in haste, repent at leisure. That could be the lesson for legislators to learn from Poland and Ukraine, both struggling to cope with the aftermath of gaming prohibitions that may have been too precipitate. When gambling was banned in Ukraine in June of last
year, the government intended to follow up with the creation of “casino zones”, as Russia has done. But the law enabling the zones in Poland was never passed, with the result that legislators are now scrambling to construct a framework to reintroduce gaming. “There are about 30 variants of the new gambling law
now being considered by Ukrainian lawmakers – from the rational to the completely absurd,” said Lyubov Loginova, Chairman of Alsart, a firm whose gaming activities include selling new slots and running Poker clubs. “Although the casinos disappeared in Russia and in
Ukraine a year ago, the gambling markets there still exist. By my estimate that volume is not less than that it was in 2008,” added Loginova, who gave a keynote address at the recent Russian Gaming Week in Moscow. In Poland, Ukraine’s neighbour to the west, a ban
Italian market buzzes as VLTs debut and online casinos become a reality
The scale of the Comma 6b rollouts could be dwarfed by new online opportunities in gambling- crazy Italy
Think summertime in Italy and you may thinkdolce far niente. One group that won’t agree, however, is the country’s gaming sector – still working hard to roll out the video lottery terminals (known as VLTs, or Comma 6b devices) that the government legalised last year, and preparing for Rome to give its widely anticipated okay to online gambling. The VLT rollouts are big. Atlantis World Group subsidiary
B Plus, for example, plans to install just under 12,000 units from Apex Gaming – including its Pinnacle cabinets – in the current half year. One of a handful of companies to win VLT licences, it will
add them to the more than 80,000 AWPs that it already operates in Italy. Online could be even bigger. It’s expected that gaming
firms will be able to offer skill games including Poker tournaments, cash Poker games, and casino games on the Internet imminently, although Web-based slots may have to wait until March 2011 or later. And it’s not only the gaming operators themselves that
will benefit from this: Italy will surely see a whole new eco- system of support services develop. For example, testing firm NMi – already certified in online gambling hot spots Alderney and Malta – has gained approval from the AAMS, Italy’s gaming regulator, which will give it the power to assess online casinos wanting to part Italians from their euros. Expect to see a lot more new entrants like NMi as well
as startups and partnerships while Italy’s gaming sector stays busy.
imposed in January on gaming machines outside casinos has led to a furious dispute with the industry that has now dragged in the Eurocrats of Brussels too. The Polish Chamber of Commerce of Producers and
Operators of Amusement Equipment charges that the ban violates EU free-market rules, that the government never notified the European Commission of its plan, and that it pushed the legislation through parliament too quickly for proper debate. Like Loginova, the association points out that the ban
creates a black gaming economy, as well as costing the state tax revenue that will approach€900m annually by 2014, and threatening the jobs of around 100,000 workers employed directly or indirectly in gaming. How Poland and Ukraine will extricate themselves
from these situations, most likely untenable in the long term, remains to be seen. What is nearly certain is that they will have learned,
the hard way, that cracking down on gaming isn’t always the easy gesture to win the morality-and-order vote that many governments perceive it to be.
INBRIEF
CAPITAL IDEA More than 80 percent of visitors to the IGE event in London this year described it as an excellent or good location, with only four percent considering it poor, according to research conducted for the organisers. Among alternative cities, Barcelona and Amsterdam were favourites, but even so, fewer than 30 percent selected either of them – so IGE is likely to remain in London.
OHIO OKAY Ohio is set to get casinos in the cities of Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus and Toledo after both houses of the legislature approved a law permitting them. Voters in the state gave the go-ahead for casinos last year.
TOO YOUNG Sands Bethworks Gaming has been fined $48,000 by the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board for allowing under-age patrons onto the gaming floor at the Sands Resort Casino in Bethlehem.
NEWHAM APPLICANTS Six firms - three of them familiar names and three less well-known - have applied for the licence to develop a large casino in the London borough of Newham, the only new one expected in the British capital in the foreseeable future. They are Apollo Resorts & Leisure, Aspers, Churchill Lincoln & Mr. Roberts, Genting, Great Eastern Quays Casino, and Grosvenor. The winner is expected to be announced on 23 December.
MURDER SENTENCE Gaming entrepreneur Mark Campbell has been sentenced to life imprisonment in Britain for the murder of his wife, Aristocrat Technologies executive Olga Pleguezuelos. However, although life sentences are always imposed for murder in the UK, he could be considered for release after 14 years. Campbell stabbed Pleguezuelos, who was about to take up a role with Aristocrat in Las Vegas, at their home in Harrow near London last year.
8 JULY 2010
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