Tere are about 100 casinos in Prague and 16 Herna Bars (gaming halls) where slots or sports betting or poker games are held.
Admiral operates 44 casinos and seven gaming halls across the Czech Republic of which five casinos are located in Prague.
Dominik Racic spokesperson for Admiral said: “We are monitoring regulatory developments and changes very closely and will take appropriate actions as necessary.”
Merkur operates 16 casinos across Czech of which five of these casinos are in Prague. Jan Herrmann, PR Editor at Merkur said: “We will be allowed to operate our VLTs in their current form for another three years until the end of 2023. Te transition period will then end and, after that, only live games will be allowed. For economic reasons it is very probable that we will then have to close all five venues in Prague as of 2024. Tis is because an arcade simply cannot be viably operated without gaming machines.
“It is anticipated that other cities will follow the example of the capital city. Te same scenario already exists in many places. One example is the city of Brno where gaming machines are already banned. A similar ban is also expected
THE ECONOMIC OUTLOOK
Despite the loss of venues and products last year the total GGR for gambling operators amounted to CzK36.3bn (€1.3bn), an increase of CzK5bn (15.8 per cent more) compared to 2018 but CzK3.5bn less than in 2017.
Te gambling act permits several types of gambling: lottery, odds betting, technical games (slots), live games, bingo, totalisator games, raffles and small tournaments.
Two thirds of the GGR is made up of landbased gambling with CzK24.4bn in GGR (67.5 per cent market share) of which the majority (41.7 per cent) comes from gaming machines with CzK15.1bn in GGR. Landbased lotteries saw a GGR of CzK6.2bn (17 per cent share); landbased table games saw a GGR of CzK2.06bn; retail betting CzK1.1bn and bingo with CzK8m and totalisator with CzK2m.
Te online gambling market makes up the remaining third with CzK11.7bn in GGR (32.5 per cent share) of which online betting saw CzK7.7bn in GGR (21.3 per cent market share); online slots with CzK2.83bn; online lotteries with CzK988m and online table games with CzK223m.
“We have a saying that rabbits should only be counted after the hunt, so we are waiting for our annual results to see how to continue. We had to take a number of precautions though. We had to decrease the number of employees, lower the
number of operations and make operations more effective and we had to focus on online activities etc, to make sure we survive this hard time.” Petr Mikoska, Director Synot
to apply in Ostrava as of summer 2022.
“Gambling is already very heavily regulated in many cities and communities in the Czech Republic - for example only live games or only casinos and no arcades or restricted opening hours - or is even completely banned (in Ceské Budejovice for example). Overall the number of cities and communities in which gambling is heavily restricted or even banned is in the three digit figure range.”
Meanwhile Synot operates 30 gaming halls and casinos in Czech and one casino in Prague, the Synot Tip Casino Praha Drahobejlova.
Synot’s Director Petr Mikoska said: “We don’t know what will be the overall impact for Synot. We have a saying that rabbits should only be counted after the hunt, so we are waiting for our annual results to see how to continue.
“We had to take a number of precautions though. We had to decrease the number of employees, lower the number of operations and make operations more effective and we had to focus on online activities etc, to make sure we survive this hard time.”
By the beginning of 2020 there were 55 companies licensed to operate in Czech of which 42 operate slots in landbased venues, six operate online slots, six online betting companies and eight online betting.
Te total amount of tax collected in 2019 amounted to CzK10.1bn of which CzK6.1bn came from slots whilst in the first quarter of 2020 the state received around CzK3.2bn in taxes from gambling and technical games.
In 2017 the Gambling Act 186/2016 came into force which replaced the old lottery act which had existed since the 1990s. Te idea was to bring the Czech market in line with European legislation and curb gambling addiction issues and reduce the black market. It also created a licensing scheme for the online sector to enable operators to legally operate their online casinos whilst it opened the market to foreign operators.
Te 186/2016 includes the following points: l
Gambling operators must be located in Czech and a legal entity in Czech or another EU or EEA state with a minimum capital of €2m.
NEWSWIRE / INTERACTIVE / MARKET DATA P39
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