Hello and welcome to the SBC News 90, here with highlights from day one of the SBC Digital Summit CIS:
During the Welcome to Ukraine panel, Boris Baum, Deputy Head of the president’s office, addressed triple licence fee issues stating that in his opinion it creates the entrance barrier.
He believes the quicker the commission introduces the online monitoring system the better the market will work.
Baum clarified that he would like to have the licence fee, and GGR introduced because the market is growing and the government should benefit from an increased market by charging GGR from the operators instead of the fixed licence fee.
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In the Impact of Gaming Regulations on the Economy panel Maxim Afanasyev, CPO of Liga Stavok, noted that Russia is not exempt from the general trend worldwide of tougher regulations as he debates the impact of gaming regulations within the CIS economy.
Afanasyev explained that he believes the industry is quite complicated using the example that you can not charge a regular ten or 15 per cent on the turnover although for a majority of other industries, the turnover would be the right parameter to set a tax on but not for gambling and for sports betting.
He added that in Russia they have seen changes to the regulation and starting from October they are paying 5 per cent on specially targeted contributions to sports federations from our GGR. It previously was five per cent on local sports only.
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Countries such as Georgia have struggled to stay afloat with a lack of tourists entering its borders for vacations due to travel bans, which has subsequently had an impact upon land-based venues.
CMO of Casino Adjara, Maka Gorgadze, detailed the online gambling company’s declining figures stating that their entire land-based casinos are based on tourists, which is 70% of visitors compared to 30% of locals. She added that most of their guests who gamble are from regions like Iran, Kuwait and Azerbaijan which are countries where gambling is prohibited.
That’s all for today, I’ll be back tomorrow for your next SBC News 90.
