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A global sharing liquidity in the Italian gaming market would open opportunities not only for poker, but also for casino, bingo and fantasy sports.
The Current Italian Regulations
One of the issues often raised by new entrants in the Italian gaming market is the lack of sharing liquidity. Indeed, Italian law allows licensed operators only to play with players that hold an Italian fiscal code i.e. Italian residents or people that used to be resident in Italy. Players can be located also abroad, but often this contrasts with foreign laws that for instance in countries like France, the UK and Spain require a local gaming license to offer games to people located in their country.
This is called “ring fenced system” and its rationale is to allow the regulator to ensure that the appropriate anti-money laundering checks are performed on players and frauds are prevented. Indeed, the fiscal code (i.e. a type of social security number) is checked in real time by the servers of the regulator on the players’ registration.
However, Italian law already provides regulations allowing sharing liquidity. And indeed, examples of international sharing liquidity have already occurred in the past in the horse betting sector. Therefore no change of a primary law would be necessary to extend the sharing liquidity to other games.
The Upcoming Global Sharing Liquidity
The announcement by the Italian online gaming regulator of a possible sharing liquidity with UK licensed gaming platforms did not get much publicity.
International sharing liquidity between Italy, France and Spain has been something on which regulators have been working for several years. The main issue seemed so far to be France that requires a primary law allowing such change which, according to the latest news, might be adopted in the next months.
However, the result of a sharing liquidity with UK licensed platforms might have a much larger effect since it would open the Italian gaming market to .COM players located anywhere in the world. But this shall be regulated in terms of
- KYC checks to be performed on players in order to limit potential frauds and
- Technical standards to be implemented to ensure the participation to the same game of players gambling under different rules.
The Italian gaming regulator has always been supportive of common international technical standards. And the introduction of sharing liquidity might for instance have a “soft launch” limiting its operation to some “shared” poker events, casino games, fantasy sports etc..
What is the impact on the Italian gaming market?
International sharing liquidity is relevant not only for poker. Indeed, casino and bingo might benefit of higher jackpots. Additionally, fantasy sports and eSports that are still exploited in a very limited manner in Italy might become a very interesting opportunity in a country that lives of football.
This is all happening when the taxation for poker tournament has been just lowered to 20% of the GGR as it will be the taxation for online bingo from January 2017 and new online gaming licenses will be issued by mid-2016.
