A combination of ongoing economic problems, legal restrictions and the widening presence of gaming machines could spell the end of Italy’s ticket redemption market, Elmac’s Tiziano Tredese said.
Over the past decade or so, ticket redemption has gained a small foothold in the Italian marketplace. Its deployment has been hampered by confusion over whether it is actually legal, with some video redemption machines having been removed from locations over the years due to them falling into a grey area between amusements and gambling.
A new decree was written to formally recognise such equipment as amusement machines, but this, said Tredese (pictured with Linda Piazza), has been “sitting there since last year.”
“Maybe one day it will be signed and ticket redemption will be legalised totally,” he told InterGame. Sadly, they will also be taxed highly, which, along with a painfully slow homologation process, threatens to ground the business before it really takes off.
For Italian FEC operators, the legal status of the equipment is only one consideration. Outside of Italy’s coastal FEC business, there are a number of FECs in towns and cities throughout the country; few were opened in the last five years, however. The economic downturn impacted revenue, while rents in the shopping malls in which they were located have remained high.
This has forced operators to curb investment in new equipment while others, sensing an opportunity to boost their revenues, have given floor space to gambling machines instead.
Tredese explained that under these circumstances, the redemption model is unlikely to survive. To prevent this from happening, Tredese proposed removing the homologation process, stating that “operators are old enough to know what is legal and what is not legal with a simple auto-certification.” This would allow distributors to buy the product they want as long as they declare it is legally sound.
“Everyone pays the required tax but there is no more homologation, that has already caused the death of video games in Italy,” he said. “Otherwise, there will be no more redemption.”
Tiziano Tredese was speaking to InterGame as part of our annual International Redemption Report featured in the July issue – out now.
