Operators welcomed with open AAMS
Lawyer Giulio Coraggio analyses the implications of the publication of the long-awaited "Comunitaria" decree by Italian regulator AAMS yesterday.
It seems the long-held prayers of operators planning to enter into the Italian online gaming market and of current Italian licensed operators are now over. The famous “Comunitaria” decree regulating the award of new Italian remote gaming licences and the upgrade of the current Italian licences to the new regime is now published on the website of the Italian Gambling Authority (AAMS).
This represents a crucial step for both current licensed operators and new entrants in the market. Indeed, even the current operators will be authorised to offer casino games and cash poker games, whose regulations have been recently approved, only after having made their platform compliant with the requirements of the Comunitaria decree and having submitted to AAMS the documentation on their platform and their company required by the decree. Such operators shall within the next 30 days need to notify to AAMS their intention to continue offering games and then they will have a 90-day period to fulfil any obligation required by the Comunitaria decree.
As concerns the new entrants into the market, they will have no deadline to apply for a licence. However, given that up to 200 licences are available and that AAMS is expected to be overwhelmed by applications of current and new operators in the next months, they would be advised to get their application in quickly to avoid any potential risk of delays or of missing the opportunity to get a licence.
Once the application for the licence is submitted to AAMS, the regulator will then have a three-month period to review the documentation and issue the licence. But the licence itself will not allow operators to immediately start offering the licensed games, they shall need to go through an authorization process, that in the case of casino games, card games and skill games, also requires the previous certification of the platform and of each game by a certification entity accredited with AAMS (the so called “EVA”).
The complex procedure described above should not “scare” operators though, as with the launch of casino games and cash poker games, the 4.8bn turnover of the Italian online gaming market in 2010 is expected to at least double by the beginning of 2012 (Source: Trust Partners).
Also, now that all the games that can be offered by Italian licensed operators are the same as those available on dot.com websites, AAMS expects that a considerable portion of Italian players will switch to licensed platforms, based upon the much higher level of guarantees and protections offered by these.
In this context, it is worth to mention that Italian criminal law sanctions also the players themselves for playing on non Italian-licensed platforms, and consequently in case of fraud or abuse from dot.com operators players could not even notify the occurrence to criminal courts without facing a potential proceeding against themselves.
The finish line for current operators and new entrants is now getting closer and closer, and it will be interesting to see which operators will be leading the Italian market in the next months.