Industry News - October 2006

International Summit on Remote Gambling

31/10/2006: International Summit on Remote Gambling was held at Ascot Racecourse in the UK. The summit was initiated by Tessa Jowell, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport and Richard Caborn, Minister of State, Department for Culture, Media and Sport, with responsibilities for gambling. The international summit was announced in January 2006 as a vehicle to press for “minimum international standards of regulation”.

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Interim Report on State Lottery Treaty

20/10/2006: The interim report on the new State Lottery Treaty has been completed; the report will be submitted at the Minister Presidents’ Conference on the 13th December where a final vote will be held. If all state Landers decide to sign the treaty then in January 2008 it will become active. It also appears that a majority of Lander can sign the current State Treaty and move it to passage in the Parliaments but it would only apply to the Lander who signed, this is contrary to our earlier reports that all Lander would have to sign the treaty for it to be legal.

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Deadline for Applying for Italian Licences

20/10/2006: Under proposals within the new 'Bersani Decree' the Italian government is set to further reform the market and expand the number of sports betting licences to 7,000 new outlets, 2,100 of which will be dedicated shops. There will also be an additional 10,000 licences for horseracing outlets, 500 of which will be dedicated shops. Taxation of sports bets will also be reduced from 17% to between 2 and 8%, depending on turnover. Currently there are around 770 licensed betting shops in Italy serving a population of a similar size to the UK where there are over 8,000 betting shops. Recently the government has allowed slot machines in betting shops and has begun to reduce the rate of tax for sports bets.

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Mats Odell Public Announcement

01/10/2006: The new minister responsible for gaming, Mr Mats Odell, has made a public announcement stating that the new government's policy is to break up the state monopoly on the Swedish gaming market and to replace it with a system in which Swedish and foreign gaming operators would be eligible to apply for a gaming licence in Sweden; this includes online gaming.

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