Opinion: A Fair Exchange?

The Italian betting exchange draft decree has finally passed the scrutiny of the European Commission. The bill had been filed with the European Commission in January 2012, but the usual 3 months standstill period had been extended to the 18th of May because of a detailed opinion filed by Spain. However, it seems that the green light from the EC has now arrived three years after that the so called Abruzzo Decree had empowered AAMS to issue betting exchange regulations.

However, it is still unclear the future that this game will have in Italy since at the moment only two operators (Betfair, and Microgame through Betdaq) seem to be interested in the offering of such game which is boosted by a taxation of 20% of gross revenues while fixed odd sportsbetting games are subject to a taxation of 2% to 5% of turnover increasing by a further 0.5 in case of offering of bets on events outside of AAMS official schedule (the Palinsesto).

Other licensees might decide to join the betting exchange network of these two operators during a time period where the figures of the sportsbetting market are decreasing and where because of the recent launch of the Italian licensed sportsbetting platforms of William Hill and Paddy Power might make the market even more competitive and hard for minor operators.

The success of the betting exchange though might depending on whether AAMS will allow operators to rely on their international liquidity which would be a unique case for Italy where all the other games and especially poker and bingo games do not allow their Italian players to play against foreign players. The internationally liquidity if introduced for betting exchange games might be the first step towards a major change in the Italian market allowing the sharing of liquidity at least among regulated markets like Spain, Denmark, France etc. for also other games. Discussions are occurring among authorities for this purpose especially with Spain, but it is hard to foresee the timing of such change.