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Reports


BULGARIA - SOFIA GAMING MARKET


A gaming tour of Sofia - from the inside out


Accepting an invitation to revisit the gaming halls of Sofia in the wake of the latest Gaming Act, we discover a market unrecognisable from the past and with an unquenchable appetite for the latest technology


Te Bulgarian gaming market is as contradictory, surprising and stereotypical as the country itself. Flying Bulgarian Air into Sofia, the inflight magazine drew attention to the fact that women occupy 44 per cent of all managerial positions in Bulgaria. It’s a surprising and progressive statistic, though the fact those women are paid almost half as much as their male counterparts for performing the same roles, shows that blind statistics rarely paint the full picture.


A whistle-stop tour of the gaming halls in Sofia showed that preconceived notions of the Bulgarian gaming market fail to appreciate the changes that have taken place in the country. Visiting locations in the capital reveals a market


P60 NEWSWIRE / INTERACTIVE / 247.COM


that is brimming with investment in the latest gaming equipment as players respond to newly opened, up-market locations that are staffed and serviced to international levels.


Te fact that the Bulgarian gaming market is in rude health is, frankly, shocking. At a time in which gaming bans are proliferating throughout the political system in Central Europe, with the Czech Republic and Slovakia most recently inflicting major land-based changes, including taxation hikes, Bulgaria has taken a different path. Not that the industry didn’t come close to the brink. Te current Gambling Act was adopted in March 2012 and entered into force on July 1 the same year. Te main focus of the law was to add controls and measures to the


burgeoning online gaming and betting sector in the country, however, the impact on the land- based sector was also marked.


While the government initially wrestled with the industry, threatening sweeping bans and stiff taxation penalties, the resultant Gaming Act was much softer in application, having also been significantly modified by the Bulgarian Government following criticism of the draft law by the European Commission. Discussing the changes with casino operators in Sofia (‘casino’ here referring to both live table casinos and electronic gaming halls), all were satisfied with the current regime under which they operate. And since the gaming industry returned more to the Bulgarian exchequer in 2016 than the


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