A news of the last few days has shaken a rapidly growing sector here in Italy, namely that of cinemas LANof the eSports and similar businesses. As always, since it is an “Italian” affair and therefore extremely ramified, smoky and always in progress, we will limit ourselves here to exposing the facts and causes of the events, without descending into subjective judgments. After the report of the entrepreneur Sergio Milesiat the head of the company Led srl which has been dealing for years in the entertainment sector and “traditional” arcades, with local areas such as JoyVillage, the Customs and Monopolies Agency has sealed the administrative seizure, pending investigations, on some PCs and home consoles installed in the LAN roomsin shops with PC gaming stations, and in commercial premises but also dedicated to the sector of eSportslike theeSport Palace from Bergamo and the We Arena from Ferrara.
How did all this come about, al LANgate how has it already been renamed by someone? Let’s start with a complaint and a ruling, or a sort of “request for clarification” sent by Milesi to ADM, where the entrepreneur basically asked himself “which entertainment systems can be installed in a game room?”. The LAN rooms, operating in a sort of gray area of the law, lacking adequate legislation, they have always worked without having to declare or approve anything, while the “traditional” arcades and slot halls are subject to taxes, controls, approvals and various authorizations in order to operate in full legality. Among these activities we also find those of Milesi, where it is possible to earn real money prizes as well as activities such as bowling. Evidently, the request for clarification caught ADM off guard, which has not been able to give a clear answer (because at the legislative level, precisely, there are no rules in this regard), thus preferring to choose the most invasive option and deciding to preventively block the premises where the use of PCs and consoles are not regulated, waiting for some rules to be established in this regard. Basically, in the complaint presented by Milesi, three critical issues are highlighted:
- The fact that, through PCs installed in a LAN room, it would be technically possible to gamble online, bypassing state business taxes in this case.
- The use of “home use” consoles, appliances and video games but used in this case in a commercial setting without any license for public use.
- The ability to autonomously assemble workstations, PCs and virtual reality experiences, but also for example complex driving simulators, in a completely autonomous way and without any approval and control.
Milesi (and the slow and incomplete Italian bureaucratic apparatus) were literally overwhelmed by the criticisms of gamers, who hastily accused him of wanting to stifle the competition of these new forms of entertainment and of these new venues that know how to make a lot of grip on the gamers of the territories in which they operate, much more than traditional arcades. The entrepreneur, on the other hand, declared that he did not do it in bad faith, but that he wanted to give the “initial spark” that should therefore begin a slow process of regularization at the regulatory and legal level of this type of activity. His company, in fact, intends to invest in the eSports sector, but Milesi then added that, having a “legitimate” company with more than 250 employees on the payroll, he does not want to operate in a gray area and wants us are clear rules in this regard to be able to invest in a legal and transparent way, without improvisation and possible future blocks, with regulations that apply to everyone.
In short, whether you believe Milesi’s words or not, the situation at the moment is this: various places of aggregation at the moment have lost their main glue, waiting for the state apparatuses to create ad hoc legislation that clarifies the terms of law in which these premises and these businesses can compete with each other. We only hope that this will finally bring Italian law into line with other European countries, giving these important spaces the recognition they deserve, recognizing their importance in an ever-evolving gaming market.
Source: esportsmag
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