Germany’s Association of Private Casinos, BupriS, has refuted claims that casinos are being protected with favourable regulations and taxes at the expense of the country’s arcades.
BupriS was responding to comments made by a politician that casinos are afforded certain protections not extended to arcades – a claim that the association said simply does not hold true.
As reported by InterGame, 200 arcade staff formed a placard-wielding 'guard of honour' for industry executives heading towards the opening ceremony for the 2012 IMA trade show in Düsseldorf, Germany. The arcade staff members held up posters demanding 'respect' from the media and politicians for their profession and their determination that their jobs are not going to be lost through politics
Fifteen of Germany's 16 states have signed an accord on betting and gaming which proposes that in five years' time new restrictions will be imposed on the country's arcades, cutting hours, numbers of machines, numbers of licences per location, separating locations by considerable distances from each other and generally taking actions which will see the country's 240,000 AWP machines reduced by at least 100,000.
The industry, led by the trade associations, has begun a war of words against local politicians, backed by members of Germany's federal government who are supporting the trade. They include Siegfried Kauder, chairman of the Legal Committee of the Deutscher Bundestag, who spoke at the opening ceremony, claiming that the casinos are in some way responsible for this new legislation.
"Why is it that in government-owned casinos people are allowed to gamble and use gaming machines which are basically the same as those in amusement arcades but are not subject to the limitations that apply in amusement arcades? Equal rights for all. What am I to tell those young people with placards? How am I to explain to them that the federal states are attempting to preserve their privileges and therefore flatten other industries?"
Kauder insisted that the accord signed between the 15 states was "in violation of constitutional law."
However, in a letter to Kaunder, BupriS executive Martin Reeckmann argued that the casino industry does not benefit from any such “privileges” but has suffered instead as a consequence of the effective deregulation of the arcade sector.
Since stricter regulations came into place in 2008, casinos in Germany have experienced a 40 per cent decline in revenues and a 30 per cent fall in patrons. The size of the arcade market has been allowed to grow significantly, meanwhile, and attention is only now being given to new regulations to curb this trend.
There are presently 74 state-licensed casinos, he said, but approximately 10,000 gaming halls, while casino operators pay taxes of up to 80 per cent of sales, compared to the standard level of corporate tax typically applied to AWP operators.
