Las Vegas Sands CEO Sheldon Adelson has “no data” to back up his anti-igaming arguments, Spanish online gaming association JDigital has said.
According to local reports, Adelson is pressuring the Spanish government to limit online gambling in Spain in order to shield his company’s potential EuroVegas investment from competition. The driving force behind the world’s largest gaming business told shareholders last month that LVS wanted the country’s igaming law repealed because the sector provided “no real benefit”, “miniscule” tax revenue, and that only physical casinos created jobs.
“I do not know on what data [that] is based to make a statement of that calibre, because no data supports their theory”, JDigital spokesman Miguel Ferrer told El Confidencial today. “In addition, Adelson forgets that online gaming companies have invested heavily in advertising and marketing since the regulated market [opened in June 2012]”
JDigital had calculated that online gambing companies spend more than €150m annually on advertising and marketing in the country, according to Ferrer.
Spanish regulator the DGOJ’s annual report, published last week, also showed that tax income from online gambling in Spain grew 90.9% to €133m in 2012. Spanish budget minister Cristobal Montoro was also reported in January to have extracted as much as €150m from foreign-owned online operators including Betfair, Bet365, William Hill, PokerStars, bwin.party, 888 and Sportingbet, by hitting them with large retrospective tax bills when they applied for dot.es licences last year.
Ferrer also told the newspaper that his organisation was also having trouble understanding exactly what kind of “limits” the American tycoon wanted imposed on a sector that had already shown signs of stagnation by Q1 of 2013.
The lobby group, whose membership includes Betfair, took the opportunity to remind the government that if the Spanish government yielded to Adelson’s demands and limited an online gambling offer set to expand this year with the launch of slots and exchange betting, “you will no longer come across competitive products in the market”, which in turn would limit its tax receipts from the regulated digital channel.
However, Juan Llamas, institutional advisor to the Spanish Federation of Rehabilitated Gamblers, argued that it was within the Spanish goverment’s power to amend any law it wished through an executive decree. Moreover, he highlighted that the tax burden on the subsectors of machines and land-based sector “is much higher than the online game”, suggesting Adelson would be well served to focus his lobbying efforts around this.
Article written by Stephen Carter
