Clive Hawkswood, Chief Executive of Remote Gambling Association. chawkswood@rga.e
u.com
comment GReece is
pRoposinG to sell some of its shaRe of state-owned opap to Raise
funds and pay off its deBt.
Organisation of Football Prognostics), which is now the most profitable company in Greece. The State draws considerable revenue from its 34.4 per cent ownership in shares in the company with the rest of ownership coming from status as a listed company in the Athens Stock Exchange since 2001.
OPAP has the sole concession to operate and administer sports betting and lottery games. Its most profitable game is Pame Stichima (meaning ‘Let’s Bet’), a fixed-odds betting game. Sports betting accounts for roughly 37 per cent of the total online player activity spend but this is less than casino games at 48 per cent.
Government ministers are proposing to sell some of the government’s 34.4 per cent share in OPAP to raise funds which are expected to raise over €1 billion for the debt-stricken republic. The sale may cause further problems
“The driver for change in Greece has almost solely been the economic crisis that it has found itself in. A reform of its gambling laws and the introduction of a licensing regime for online gambling could and should produce some fresh revenue streams for the government. However, although Greece is already an important market for several of the big online gambling companies any new regime still needs to be economically viable for them. The government needs to balance those two objectives if it is to succeed. Officials working on the legislation and the shaping of any subsequent regulations have shown themselves willing to consider reasoned arguments and dependable research. This includes at the detailed technical level. It could bode well for the future, but dissent at a political level led to the whole process coming to a halt in the Spring of 2011. It is impossible to know what dynamics contribute to bottle-necks of that kind becoming unblocked, but it rarely leads to considered and evidence based policy making. While the indication that the gambling tax was to be based on gross profits is encouraging, that is only one step towards creating a viable regime. Many other key issues have yet to be resolved satisfactorily. These include a potential cap on the number of new licenses that will be made available; severe restrictions on product offerings; the rate of tax and the fact that an additional gambling tax is to be levied on consumers; and, of course, what anti- competitive measures might be taken to shore up the position of OPAP in which the government has such a direct and major financial involvement. “
at European level due to the company no longer operating as a state-owned monopoly but still receiving exclusivity in the sports betting and lottery markets – to the fury of Stanleybet.
There are also proposals to sell, ODIE, the government-owned horse racing company.
Illegal operators dominate the Greek online market. Sportingbet, reported earnings of €55
million of net gaming revenue in 2010 - 14.4 per cent of its revenues are just from Greece alone.
Bwin.Party, earned gaming revenue of €50 million last year – 7 per cent of its revenues. Betfair earn 6 per cent of its revenues from Greece. However, truly accurate online gambling data figures are difficult to come by due to the current lack of official oversight within the grey market in which the above mentioned companies operate relatively freely.
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