Around 80 online gambling license applications were submitted to Italy’s gambling regulator, local news outlets reported on Monday citing sources from the regulatory body.
Agenzia delle dogane e dei monopoli, the country’s regulatory body tasked with overseeing its gambling industry, launched a call for bids for online gambling licenses in January after months of delays. As previously reported by Casino News Daily, the process was expected to commence in mid-September 2017.
The regulator eventually opened a competition process for 120 licenses in early 2018 and set a March 19 deadline. According to Italian news outlets, around 80 applications were submitted before the deadline ran out. However, that figure is not final, as at least one online gambling operator is understood to have applied for an extension of the application deadline. What is more, the number of applications could increase as the necessary papers might have been sent through the post.
As part of the application requirements, all applicants had to pay a one-off fee of €200,000. The ADM will thus collect at least €16 million from the process.
Regulators are set to open the bids at noon local time on April 19. They will be reviewed in order of submission from the first received to the last one. The winning bidders will be issued licenses for the provision of online gambling services that will be valid through December 31, 2022.
While the bidders for licenses are yet to be identified, it is believed that most of them are already operating in the Italian online gambling market and are seeking to have their licenses extended. However, several newcomers are expected to extend their footprint into the local market, including Marathonbet and Pinnacle.
It should be noted that while the ADM opened a bidding process for 120 concessions, that same number of applications is not likely to be reached, despite original expectations for great interest among both operators already licensed in Italy and newcomers.
Italy’s Shared Liquidity Progress
Some of the licenses that are to be issued would authorize online gambling operators to participate in the international poker liquidity project. Winamax and 888poker were among those to have expressed interest in joining the scheme and were understood to have taken the necessary steps toward that goal.
However, Italy is yet to publish its technical standards framework, a piece containing the requirements for player pooling that each participating country needs to craft and officialize by publishing it on its Official Gazette. France, Spain, and Portugal have already completed that step, and PokerStars has already launched its PokerStars Europe network with Franco-Spanish tables. The operator has said that it would likely be able to welcome Portuguese players from the second quarter of the year.
In Italy the recent general election delayed work on the technical standards framework and it is yet to be seen when the piece would be crafted and introduced and whether this task would be completed by the outgoing government or by incoming ministers.
