SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
Stanleybet governance has announced that it intends to challenge the decision by Italian gambling regulator, Agenzia delle Dogane e dei Monopoli to award its provisional lottery concession to IGT subsidiary Lottomatica.
On Monday, a Lottomatica led four-party consortium had been announced as lotto provisional contract owners, following a bid of €770 million in upfront concession payments.
The Italian regulator awarded the nine-year concession to Lottomatica, who expects to finalise its deal by Q2 2016.
This morning Stanleybet, an operator with retail betting assets in Italy issued a corporate statement detailing that it would ‘seek the annulment of the tender, within Italian and European courts”.
Stanleybet’s challenge centres on the tender process undertaken by the regulator, which it claims was designed to favour Lottomatica’s bid.
“it was immediately clear from the tender documents which Stanleybet had challenged before the Administrative Court that the requisites were tailor-made for a specific operator with very specific characteristics” a Stanleybet statement read
Stanleybet CEO John Whittaker openly criticised the regulators decision, stating
“I heard with disbelief about the real-time award of the Lotto concession to Lottomatica, based on terms of tender challenged in court and awaiting judgement, which points to a tailor-made architecture beyond one’s wildest imagination. “
“I am truly sorry in seeing that the new Italian Government, which was able to gain much respect and visibility abroad for its vision and forward-looking capabilities, should have shown itself sadly inadequate to manage in a credible way a major European tender. We will, as usual, place full confidence in the Courts and will in the coming years leave no stone unturned to oppose this fresh injustice which, besides to Stanley, causes damage to all gambling concession-holders and millions of Italian consumers”.
Demonstrating its intent, Stanleybet governance this morning warned the Italian Ministry not to proceed in awarding the contract to Lottomatica and to wait for the upcoming ruling of the Administrative Court relating to the matter.
