After a period of collecting themselves, the tumultuous romance between France and Italy has finally been confirmed. The country’s respective iGaming regulators, ARJEL and AAMS, have signed the much-vaunted Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) that has been in the works for some time. The terms of the agreement formalize information sharing amongst the two regimes and will see working groups set up to discuss common issues.
The agreement was signed in Rome earlier today by AAMS director general Raffaele Ferrara and Jean-Francois Vilotte, president of ARJEL. A joint release stated that the two would work together on regulation and any regulatory developments that might take place in the future. There is still no word on whether the two will be pooling liquidity but it was confirmed some time ago that this had at least been discussed.
Also in Italy, SNAI confirmed that it would be making the purchase of slots-to-online business Cogetech. The deal is thought to be worth a figure of €141.6m and has long been muted as being in the pipeline. This is because the new owners of SNAI, Global Games, have been the financiers behind Cogetech since 2010. The deal will be financed using €30m of SNAI’s funds in addition to an increase in share capital to €67m and a new convertible loan of €44m.
As a result of the deal, SNAI’s position in the betting sector will be significantly stronger. For example their 9% share of the machines business will double to around 18%. Their share of the sports betting sector will be almost 40% and their online poker share will go from 5% to around 7%.
