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The Italian administrative court of Lazio region held that Italian gaming licensees are not liable for the conduct of their marketing shops, unless they have acted with negligence in monitoring the activity of such shops.
Italian gaming law allows gaming operators to enter into agreements with shops only for the marketing of gaming account top up cards and for the distribution and collection of gaming account agreements. These shops (the so called “PDCs”) are strictly prohibited to offer any games to their customers and cannot be involved in any gaming or betting activity.
The Italian gaming authority following the breach of the abovementioned ban by a PDC had automatically disconnected the relative licensee from the servers of the Italian gaming authority for 30 days consequently blocking any gaming activity offered by such licensee during this period without verifying whether there was any negligence by the licensee in the monitoring of the activity of the PDC.
The administrative court of Lazio region held that licensees cannot be considered “objectively” liable for the activity performed by the PDCs. Indeed, in this specific case, the licensee had instructed an external company to monitor the activity of its PDCs and following the challenging of the illegal conduct of the PDC by the Italian gaming authority had immediately terminated the agreement with this PDC. Such measures have been considered adequate to relative scenario by the administrative court that therefore annulled the order implementing the disconnection from the servers of the Italian gaming authority.
This decision on one hand represents a good news for Italian gaming licensees since it held that if they put in place adequate monitoring systems in relation to the activity of PDCs and adequate measures to react to illegal activities of their PDCs, they will not be considered liable for their conduct. On the other hand though, this decision might cause less stringent controls by operators on the activity of PDCs and potentially a higher percentage of illegal activities by the PDCs.
The main issue arisen from this decision though is that PDCs need to be regulated through more stringent measures to avoid that they become illegal betting or gaming shops.
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