who served as Prime Minister between 2015 and July 2019.
Syriza stormed into power in 2015 replacing the ND after discontent over tough fiscal measures imposed by Greece’s bailout creditors. Despite anti austerity promises however Syriza had to accept tough demands by Europe and IMF in a bid to rescue the Greek economy.
Greece finally exited its bailout in 2018 but financial troubles remain including a big unemployment rate of 18 per cent. With 11.4 million in population the country is head by President Prokopis Pavlopoulos who was elected in 2015 and is a veteran politician of the ND party.
THE VLT MARKET
VLTs arrived in Greece in 2017. Traditionally, gaming in Greece was restricted to the casino market with amusements permitted in arcades
and in street sites. Of course, illegal slots were rife and even video games would pay out money.
In 2002, the whole thing erupted in a political scandal and the government’s knee jerk reaction to the public outcry was to introduce the 3037/2002 bill, which saw all electronic games banned. Te problem was that the law was drafted in such a hurry that it wasn’t able to differentiate between a gaming machine and games played on a computer at home.
Te Greek industry crashed and died overnight whilst the ban, combined with a complete lack of regulation, led to the emergence of a vast illegal market.
In September 2010, the government began its legislative initiative ‘Regulating the Gaming Market’ and in January 2011 the new Greek gambling bill was introduced No. 4002/2011, which gave OPAP the exclusive monopoly for
VLT operation and permitted the company to host 35,000 VLTs of which 16,5000 would be installed and operated directly by OPAP and 18,500 would be operated by concessionaires. Te initial licence period was set for 10 years and OPAP paid €560m for the licence.
In 2017, an amendment was added and the number of VLTs was reduced to 25,000 VLTs. No concessionaires were required and OPAP’s licence duration was extended from 10 to 18 years starting from 2017.
A maximum of 50 VLTs can be housed in gaming halls (offering only VLTs) and a maximum of 15 VLTs can be housed in traditional OPAP stores (with other OPAP products). As of the beginning of December 2019, some 23,400 VLTs had been installed at 400 gaming halls and around 2,100 OPAP stores.
Tere are over 100,000 active continuous VLT players on average per month with a 400,000
NEWSWIRE / INTERACTIVE / MARKET DATA P107
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