Betting operator OPAP says it will mount a legal challenge of Greece‘s new gambling tax, while the government may soften the hit to OPAP by excluding casino games from its new online gambling licensing regime.
On Tuesday, finance minister Euclid Tsakalotos announced that the country had worked out a deal with its international lenders to free up additional billions of badly needed bailout cash. The deal includes a five Euro-cent tax on OPAP’s lottery and sports betting products, with the aim of raising an additional €300m to €400m in annual tax revenue.
OPAP spokesman Odysseas Christophorou warned that the plan would backfire on the government, as the new tax would discourage gamblers from engaging in their favorite flutter, thereby lowering OPAP’s overall tax contribution to the state. OPAP’s 2014 tax bill came to over €500m, thanks to the new 30% tax on revenue imposed by the government in 2013.
To smooth OPAP’s ruffled feathers, the government is reportedly considering excluding random number generator (RNG) casino games from its new online licensing regime, thereby preserving OPAP’s online casino monopoly. Greece has vowed to raise an additional €500m in tax revenue by issuing new online gambling licenses, tenders for which could open as early as Q1 2016.
The new licenses would supplant the 24 temporary licenses the previous government issued to international operators in 2011 and then revoked one year later. The revocation was widely perceived as a bid to boost OPAP’s value before the cash-strapped government sold its one-third stake in the company to the Emma Delta consortium.
The revocation of those 24 online licenses led to a flurry of litigation that continues to this day. Further howls of anti-competitive outrage are expected if Greece follows through on plans to restrict its new licensees from offering RNG slots and other casino table games, as an unnamed senior gaming exec recently told eGaming Review.
The exec said it was still unclear what course the government would take, but expectations are that new online licensees will be allowed to offer poker, sports betting and live dealer casino games, while online slots and other RNG casino games would remain under OPAP’s monopoly control. At this point, the only guaranteed outcome would appear to be more legal bills.
