The conference ‘Transparency and Clear Regulation in the Gaming Business’ was so well attended that not all the delegates could get in. For their next conference SAGSE director, Giorgio Gennari, will have to find a bigger venue. Addresses were from notable figures in the gaming industry who spoke with authority on the subject, such as Sr Angel Maria Escolano, President of the Spanish Casino Association, who’s talk was entitled ‘The European Experience.’

Of great importance to regulators and operators is the subject of Online Tracking Systems. Sr Juan José Marc, President of the Argentinean Foundation for the Era of Information (AEI) and Systems Director of the Buenos Aires Provincial Institute of Lotteries and Casinos, described the implementation of such a system for the slot machines in Buenos Aires. Regulators in Peru and Puerto Rico have incorporated online tracking systems into their legislation in order to control real-time play.

Juan José Marc confirmed what serious operators have been preaching for years, that both tables and slot machines can have data information on play almost instantly, originally with paper and pencil and later with the simple Lotus 1-2-3 programme. Nowadays, like the system used in Buenos Aires, partial results for the movement of play can be had in a minute. Or as Bill Gates would say: at the speed of thought.

More will be heard from Sr Marc in January 2005 as he has been invited to speak at the Conference for Regulators arranged by Gaming Laboratories International (GLI) in Las Vegas. In Argentina he led a successful project for the implementation of information technology for community development, and then turned his attention to making slot machine businesses more transparent to the regulators, therefore maximising the social taxes revenues. In a record six months the online tracking system was up and running.

Before the installation of the system the province of Buenos Aires had in 2001 revenue of 1.8 million pesos ($1.8 million in those days) from slot machine taxation. In 2003, after one full year of the controls being implemented, the revenue had risen to 210 million pesos ($70 million now). The online tracking system cost over 2.5 million dollars, paid for almost entirely by the operators.

With the earnestness of a preacher, Juan José Marc declared that online tracking systems protect all the ‘partners’ in the gaming business: company, employee and the state. As tax collection from slot machines is now 4% of GDP for the province, more governments may soon be including the provision of such tracking systems in their gaming regulations.

© Copyright 2004 CasinoCompendium



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