Ties between the industry and regulators are improving, Alberto Lazcano Sámano tells InterGaming
Mexico – where to begin? It is a market that most believe offers huge opportunities for the gaming industry, yet its laws are confusing and in need of reform. Its trade show, ELA, has quickly established itself as one of the most important events on the calendar but at this year’s show a falling out between two local gaming associations placed its future in doubt. Are fears that the market is developing too far and too fast now being realised?
In the initial aftermath of last August’s deadly arson attack on Casino Royale in Monterrey, which claimed the lives of 52 people, there was a sense that urgent change was needed. The attack is widely thought to have been related to Mexico’s organised crime gangs but became caught up in the debate over the awarding of gaming licences and the legitimacy of the country’s casinos. Few doubted the need for this area to be reformed but what followed, however, was a highly reactionary ban on card games and roulette that served only to punish legal operators.
“The day after the Monterrey fatal event, the very first reaction of the authorities was to immediately implement a kind of witch hunt against casinos by putting together a spectacular media show based on some confiscations and closures,” Alfredo Lazcano Sámano, managing partner and director of Lazcano Sámano, told InterGaming. “However, this reactionary tendency substantially decreased in the following weeks because, back then, the legitimate gaming companies effectively found their way to organise themselves in order to convince – and prove – to the government that the major part of those confiscations and closures were biased, arbitrary and unfair.”
The ban on card games and roulette was, he said, an unjustified misinterpretation of the law and its regulations. It was introduced not through a legal resolution but a simple press communication in the wake of the Casino Royale attack.
This feature can be read in full in the July 2012 issue of InterGaming magazine
