New notes Betting


Both Ladbrokes and William Hill have told MPs that business for high street bookmakers hasn’t exactly been booming under the


Gambling Act.


A new £50 note is in circulation featuring the portraits of Matthew Boulton and James Watt on the back. It is the highest denomination in value and largest in size (approx. 156mm x 85mm) and features a large number 50 and £ symbol in the top left corner on the front of the note to assist easy recognition of its value.


THE AVERAGE NUMBER OF MACHINES IN LADBROKES SHOPS IS 3.85


Stanleybet takes ‘another positive step’ in Italy


ITALY E Hard times on the high street REGULATION L


adbrokes man- aging director Richard Glynn has told MPs that economic condi-


tions would take prece- dence over the number of gaming machines in any one betting shop. While answer- ing questions on the limit of four gaming machines per shop with the Culture Select Committee, Glynn revealed that around 40 per cent of the betting shop estate’s revenues were from machines, but demand for the product was not uniform across the country. He commented: “I think the economic reality is there are space requirements and overriding that there are commercial requirements. We won’t put machines in there. We have to pay money to rent the machines, we have to pay money to put staff in there. We won’t put machines in there where there is no demand. I think our penetration rate is about 3.85 at the moment in the shops so there is a number of shops there that just cannot sustain even the number of machines that we


are allowed. If it was increased to five or six then I am sure if the demand was satisfied at that level we think that would be a very fair outcome.”


The committee asked whether the restriction on machines had led to the ‘clustering’ of LBOs on the high street, but William Hill’s commercial director David Steele was quick to dispel the suggestion that a book- maker would open a shop for gaming machines alone and also that there has been an increase in betting shops. He explained: “I think if you look at clustering gen- erally - and there are a small number of high streets, all probably in and around inner London, where there has been a slight increase in numbers - I don’t believe it is anything to do with numbers of machines or caps on the numbers of machines. We are in a com- petitive environment.” Steele used the example of Hackney and Haringey, the former has five fewer shops since the introduc- tion of the Gambling Act while the latter has four


10,000 Poles sign up with Fortuna


POLAND E


uropean bookmaker Fortuna Entertainment Group has started taking


registrations at efortuna.pl and subscribers data verifi- cation ahead of the imple- mentation of new online gambling laws in Poland. Since the beginning of Sep-


tember, Fortuna has already signed up over 10,000 indi- vidual subscribers.


The amendment to the Polish Gambling Act, which enables Polish bookmakers legally operating on the domestic market - such as Fortuna - to offer fixed-odds


12 BettingBusinessInteractive • NOVEMBER 2011


more over the same period. “We are not talking about significant increases,” he said. “If I look at our own estate in Hackney, we had 29 before the Act and we still have 29. If I take Haringey, we had 22 and now we have 19. This is a competitive environment. It is supply and demand. The reason we have less is that they were not profitable in those locations.”


Steele said that within the London boroughs, the number of William Hill shops has actually dropped from 651 to 628, while in Glasgow, Manchester and Leeds com- bined they have only increased by a total of four. “These are not significant numbers,” Steele contin- ued,” and I think the reality is when the demand test was removed you were always going to get one or two places where there would be an increase in shops. I don’t think it is anything to do with machine numbers. This is a highly geared, fixed cost business. Nobody wants to operate the cost of an entire shop purely for machines. It doesn’t work.”


bets services online, came into force on 14 July. The process of launching its newly regulated online betting offer includes the registration of already sub- scribed and brand new users to Fortuna website, followed by the opening an online account for online betting purposes. To fulfill the regis- tration process, each sub- scriber must provide accurate and up-to-date personal details along with an ID number, enabling age verification. Each subscriber


ANALYSIS


Richard Glynn took the opportunity to appeal for ‘the flexibility to compete’ in the leisure industry - saying that while the industry is well regulated, profits since the introduction of the Gambling Act have been hit. He added: “But there is no doubt that it is an incredibly tough time


economically for the industry and anything that we can get that helps us, through really strong competition, to grow this industry, to put more jobs into the UK, to keep on investing in the high streets in the UK and to keep on paying high rates of tax, then we would welcome that.”


is entitled to register one online account.


Jan Stefanek, CEO of Fortuna subsidiary Fortuna zakłady bukmacherskie, commented: “Fortuna Enter- tainment Group has been successfully providing on- line services and has a broad experience in running online fixed-odds bets in Czech Republic and Slovakia. Our intention is to introduce such services in Poland as well, after we receive the green light from the Polish Ministry of Finance. By the end of Sep-


uropean bookmaker Stanleybet has described the opinion of Advocate General Cruz- Villalòn as ‘another posi- tive step’ in its long term campaign to restore the rule of EU law to the betting sector in Italy. Cruz-Villalòn has run his eye over two joined cases, Costa and Cifone, which were referred to the Euro- pean Court of Justice for guidance by the Supreme Criminal Court of Italy on a number of the key-features of the new betting conces- sions enshrined in the Bersani tenders of 2006. Although the Court is not bound to follow the opinion of the Advocate General, it is generally fol- lowed in a large majority of the final judgments, which is why Stanleybet is so pleased that Cruz-Vil- lalòn has suggested that that EU law is incompati- ble with national provi- sions such as those of the Bersani Decree and the tenders of 2006. Cruz-Villalòn said that the Bersani regulations perpetuated the effects of the unjust exclusion of operators from the old tenders, by foreseeing a general policy favouring incumbents – whose licences were awarded contrary to EU law in the first place - and justifying this through wide discre- tionary administrative


powers.


He also said that, con- trary to EU law, the regula- tions lay down restrictions of activity and minimal dis- tances between new con- cession holder retail points and those of incumbents; and established limits to the catalogue of permissi- ble betting products, which is only allowed if set according to objective, transparent and non dis- criminatory criteria and capable of effective judi- cial remedies.


The Advocate General added that the Bersani tenders forced on cross- border European opera- tors such as Stanleybet the unfair choice between exercising the freedom of establishment by bidding for the new Bersani con- cessions (and thus being obliged to abandon their cross-border activity and investments) and exercis- ing the freedom to provide services, which would dis- qualify themselves from the Bersani concessions. Stanleybet CEO David Purvis commented: “We are pleased to see that Advocate General Cruz Vil- lalòn has so strongly endorsed the values for which Stanleybet has been struggling for over a decade. We look forward with the utmost confi- dence to the judgment of the Court of Justice in due course.”


STANLEYBET CEO DAVID PURVIS


tember we have recorded 10,000 users, that have either completed verification process or registered at our website. We are very content with this result. Moreover, we are expecting that these are the people that will be using Fortuna’s soon-to-be- launched online services.” Polish bettors are heavily incentivised to bet with locally licensed operators under the new laws as placing online bets with foreign parties can attract a penalty of up to three years


of imprisonment.


Fortuna has underlined that it strictly abides by the age verification proce- dures, which will also be applied with the online bidders, and that all Fortuna clients will be provided with full customer services and support - both online and in sales points. As a book- maker registered and oper- ating legally in Poland, Fortuna said it acts in com- pliance with the Polish Gambling Act and is a tax- payer, subject to Polish law.


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