Ever since Liverpool bookmaker Stanley first launched legal action to have 329 of the country’s best horseracing betting licences put out to tender, the issue has been the subject of passionate debate among Italy’s betting sector operators. Details of the new bid process, following Stanley’s court success, has only served to turn up the volume on the controversy though.

08/09/2008

The head of Casinos de France, the country’s leading casino trade association, has predicted the closure of up to five percent of his members’ businesses unless the French government moved to lessen the industry’s tax burden.

04/09/2008

Online poker, now officially sanctioned by the Italian gaming authority AAMS, has gone live in Italy and yesterday the first real money games took place on an Italian licensed website.

03/09/2008

OPAP, the Greek monopoly operator and Europe's largest gaming firm, has confirmed its plans to bid for Turkey's national lottery Milli Piyango in a joint venture with Turkish business groups. The announcement followed the publication of full bid details from last week’s sport’s lottery tender.

02/09/2008

The winner of the bid process to manage the multibillion-euro sports betting lottery Iddaa in Turkey was declared yesterday, with Intralot's joint venture Inteltek’s revenue split offer judged the best of the three put forward.

29/08/2008

The Italian Government has confirmed that a new tender process to award over 500 horserace betting licences will be conducted during October. The tender has been put into motion by a European Court of Justice ruling that Italy illegally re-awarded 329 licences to domestic operators back in 2000.

28/08/2008

The exhaustive and bruising scrutiny of competitors in the race to manage Turkey’s sports lottery has seen Italy’s gaming regulator offer verification of the suitability of one of the Italian candidates. Their response has highlighted another of the hurdles facing bidders.

27/08/2008

A report in the Turkish press last week, suggesting that Lottomatica’s bid to take control of the country’s sports betting business had been suspended, has given rise to fears of a dirty tricks campaign. But the report, denied by Lottomatica, came to light on the same day that authorities also revealed the announcement of the winning bidder is to be delayed.

26/08/2008

Following William Hill's recent departure, another overseas operator, which plunged into Italy without a local partner, announced yesterday that is heading for the exit. The move underlines the necessity of local partnerships in one of Europe's fastest growing markets.

21/08/2008

While Italy’s ‘official’ operators are in the final stages of preparing their platforms as part of the landmark regulation of online poker in Italy, PokerStars continues to operate its play-for-fun site in the country despite not having a licence and despite having endured a rap over the knuckles from the advertising watchdog.

18/08/2008

After months of speculation, and with the Spor Toto tender process now nearing completion, the long awaited privatization process for Turkey's state-owned national lottery, Milli Piyango, is expected to begin “within weeks”.

14/08/2008

Fears that a partnership between Lottomatica and a local media group would fall short of the entry criteria for Turkey’s sports lottery tender proved to be the catalyst for an alliance between the Italian lottery giant and former rival SNAI announced just prior to yesterday’s deadline. The new, expanded grouping will be up against incumbent Inteltek and a consortium involving the UK’s Ladbrokes.

13/08/2008

Whilst Ladbrokes and William Hill revealed mixed fortunes in their latest figures, one-time rival Stanley has revealed a substantial increase in its international business – and an intention to return to compete on its home turf.

13/08/2008

The ongoing saga of the 329 Italian horserace betting licences that the European Court of Justice said were extended illegally by the country’s gaming authorities in a 2000 tender process appears no closer to reaching a conclusion in August, despite pledges by the Italian government that a new tender would be held this month.

11/08/2008

Gala Coral and Scientific Games are believed to have ruled out a bid for the 10-year sports lottery licence ahead of next week’s entry deadline, clearing the way for a battle between joint ventures involving Greek gaming giant Intralot, the UK’s Ladbrokes and GTech/Lottomatica.

06/08/2008

Italian gaming market leader SNAI unveiled a challenge against rival Lottomatica’s monopoly position in online scratchcards on the same day that Lottomatica announced interim results which showed the importance of the overall instant win market to the company’s bottom line.

04/08/2008

A headline in the Italian sportsbetting daily ‘Bet’ this week, “The flop of the overseas bookmakers, for them Italy is hard work”, may have been calculated to cause indigestion in the board rooms of some operators. However for Unibet the news was worse – they had their link to the government database disconnected on suspicion that they are transferring customers to their overseas website.

25/07/2008

PokerStars’ provocative strategy of pushing its promotional activity even in apparent defiance of local legislation has run into trouble in Italy. Its massively successful campaign has now been brought to a halt, not by the gaming authorities, but by Italian advertising regulators.

25/07/2008

Opening a network of new betting outlets is far from easy, but results published on July 16 reveal that in Italy some companies are still struggling to activate the licences they acquired at the beginning of 2007. Others, however, seem to have the magic touch.

18/07/2008

In the long-running saga of the reassignment of the Italian Superenalotto lottery contract, it was announced on July 15 that the judges of the Consiglio di Stato High Court have thrown out a challenge by operators Stanley and Tipp24 for the recent tender process to be annulled.

17/07/2008

After six years overseeing the transformation of Italy’s betting sector, Giorgio Tino, now freed of the restrictions placed on him by his former role as boss of AAMS, has weighed up the successes and failures of the regime that is now in place. He pulled no punches when describing the shortcomings of the regulator and the gambling opponents inside Parliament.

16/07/2008

As the deadline for bids nears, a number of key conditions have changed in the bidding process for control of Turkey’s Spor Toto Agency fixed-odds sports betting product and a deadline extension has been granted. The changes are the result of pressure from participants in the tender, who insisted the playing field was far from level.

15/07/2008

Bookmaker Stanley International has claimed a resounding victory at a court hearing which they believe confirms the illegitimacy of Italy’s Bersani licensing process. The ruling is the final playing out of a legal chess game that began 18 months ago, casts new light on the mechanics of the Bersani bidding process and, observers believe, could force a deal between AAMS and Stanley.

15/07/2008

New figures released by the Italian central gaming authority AAMS reveal that the newly liberalised sports-betting market continues to expand – and suggest that the previous incumbent operators are grabbing the lion’s share.

09/07/2008

With new market numbers confirming the continued growth of the Italian sports betting market, commentators have begun to speculate that the operator SNAI may soon be the subject of a bid from private equity firm CVC Capital Partners. The news comes at a time when the operator’s share price has seen dramatic falls during the past 12 months.

01/07/2008

SICON, the trade association representing the smaller independent operators in the Italian betting market, held a meeting for its members on June 26 in Rome and outlined plans for defending themselves against the increasing domination of the larger groups, the eroding effect of new legislation and the activities of overseas operators such as Stanley who are still present in the market.

27/06/2008

Could the timing of the arrests of Sportingbet employees and agents in Turkey and the recent launch of a new tender for the sports betting monopoly in the country be merely coincidental? There are reasons to think not, and the suspicion of political involvement is further heightened by the salacious headlines that the event has generated in the Turkish media.

19/06/2008

Only days after the publication of the tender for the monopoly sports betting licence in Turkey, the authority has chosen to modify the details, giving potential bidders another four days to assemble documentation and complete the procedures required to compete in the process, the new deadline now being July 21.

18/06/2008

The long-awaited tender for the lucrative monopoly sports betting contract in Turkey was published on June 6, and with a timescale that requires operators to submit their bids by the July 17, there are already accusations that the terms have been drafted to favour the incumbent joint venture operator Inteltek.

16/06/2008

It’s official: this summer Italy will see a new bid process for the 329 betting shop licences that were - according to the EU - extended unfairly in 1999 in a procedure that bypassed the tender of that year.

27/05/2008