The Italian government recently released a new framework for licensing online betting companies. The new concessions, valid for nine years, will be granted until the end of the year, with license fees of 7 million euros each.
Online betting license fee is exorbitant
The online betting license fee is 35 times higher than the €200,000 fee introduced in 2018. In addition, operators will also pay 3% of the annual gross gaming revenue (GGR) after tax.
The Ministry of Finance justifies the increase due to the change in market dynamics, dominated by a limited number of large operators, such as SNAI, Lottomatica (which is acquiring SKS365), Flutter and Entain.
So, the new framework aims to resolve protracted legal disputes over license renewals between operators and the Italian regulator, the ADM Customs and Monopolies Agency. Therefore, the government intervened to prevent ADM from terminating licenses that would expire in 2023 and 2024.
However, the online gambling association argues that increasing fees will limit competition. The license terms will restrict operators to one website and one application per gaming product. No affiliated skin sites will be allowed.
Therefore, customers must set playing limits in accordance with the technical rules, and will receive warning messages when they are close to these limits. But ADM will have the power to use payment blocking to combat unlicensed online gambling.
Bidding for other types of games
IGT currently manages the Lotto Euro game under a license valid until November 2025, but the Italian government plans to open a tender for it.
Lotto Euro’s annual turnover is expected to reach €7.7 billion after 2025, with around €200 million in net annual revenues. The government established an initial offer of 1 billion euros.
However, progress remains slow on online gambling reforms in Italy. The Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF) began talks with the country’s 20 autonomous regions. But despite ongoing discussions, the implementation of the new legislation has not yet progressed significantly.
In other words, the updated legislation introduces new rules for betting shops, online betting, gaming arcades, gaming machines and bingo halls, including minimum distance requirements and changes to opening hours.
However, Italian media reported that the discussions “stopped immediately” because the regions had doubts about the reforms.
