Commenting on recent reports about Spain and Italy opening up their gambling markets, Julian Graham-Rack, Head of William Hill’s international business told Reuters that Hills is trying to build a pan-Spanish business. .”Spain is an unproven market in many ways. So far it’s a gross-win tax market and one where regulators have not sought to be very prescriptive around the products you can bet on, so it’s a bit more open.”
Graham-Rack considers Spain a better opportunity than Italy. “Italy is a complicated market. The local incumbents are very protected, because the old betting shops have got exclusion zones around them,” he told Reuters. “It’s a turnover tax there, as opposed to a gross win tax, and the regulations, in terms of what you can bet on, are very well controlled, so you are operating more as an agent for the government rather than a private operator.”
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