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Lawyer Stefano Sbordoni, president of the Unione Totoricevitori Italiani Sportivi, raises the alarm on the need for urgent measures for the extension of the online concessions all expiring on December 31 2022

Next December 31st all the online concessions for the collection of remote games will expire and lawyer Stefano Sbordoni, as President of the U.T.I.S., in a recent interview with Agimeg.it, raises the alarm because "there is no sign of an extension ". Furthermore, the PNRR Decree Law extended the concessions for the collection of “land” bets on sporting events, including horse racing and non-sporting events, which had expired for years. For the "online" concessions, however, as is known, the Lazio TAR in November last year, regarding a series of appeals proposed for the annulment of the provision of the Customs and Monopoly Agency with which the collection of online game was interrupted from the day following that of the deadline, it had established that "... the time alignment to 31 December 2022 of the aforementioned concessions in order to allow the Agency to organize and successfully complete a tender for the selection, through an open, competitive and non-discriminatory procedure, of 120 concessions for the marketing of the aforementioned remote games' in good time with respect to the natural expiry of the existing concessions "is based precisely on" the relationship between provision and legislation referred to in art. 1, paragraph 9 35, of Law no. 208/2015 "intended to guarantee, pending a new tender for the award of concession titles," the continuity of tax revenues, as well as hé the protection of players and public faith through actions that allow the fight against illegal gambling ". Therefore, according to the administrative judges, this objective can be pursued through a "generalized temporal realignment at the date of '31 December 2022 ′ of the validity regime of all remote gaming concession relationships in place at the time of the entry into force of the discipline, intended to allow - albeit progressively - a uniform starting date for the start of new concessions for remote gaming, in order to allow operators to see their titles expire simultaneously and, in this way, to participate in the subsequent procedure under the same conditions of parity "." The extension pursuant to law ", continued the Lazio Regional Administrative Court," pursues public interests even before private ones as it tends to guarantee the continuity of tax revenues and, at the same time, to counter the illegal game stemming from existing competition in the context of the public offer "and, therefore," the legislator reasonably intended to pursue this interest prop rio through the identification of a single deadline of final validity valid for all two groups of concessions (31 December 2022). The Lazio TAR, in essence, highlighted how "the compliant interpretation of art. 1, paragraph 935, of law no. 208/2015, leads us to believe that through this provision the legislator wanted to provide for a real heterointegration pursuant to the law of the concession relationship pursuant to art. 1374 of the Italian Civil Code in terms of time duration, with the replacement of the new unitary deadline of 31 December 2022 (legally set) to the nine-year deadlines starting from the signing of the individual agreements, essentially aiming the legislator to standardize the validity regime of the two groups of concessions pending the completion of the public tender procedures concerning the assignment of the aforementioned titles, procedures that are the responsibility of the granting administration to activate ". Well, now that deadline of December 31, 2022 is near and there are no signs for an extension of these online concessions! "It's true", underlines lawyer Sbordoni, "that it is not the right time to find a solution because there will be elections on September 25 and we will have to wait for the installation of the new government, but it remains that December 31 will be the final deadline for the expiry of online concessions and today , where online gaming is in a progressive growth due to many factors, it is unthinkable that they can be allowed to expire like this ". "For the competitions", concludes the President of U.T.I.S., "everything will depend on the timing that the new Government will want to give to shelter a situation that is neither right nor left, but it is an objective critical situation for which we are also subject to criticism from abroad ”.