We offer you the third and final part of the interview with Mr. Cristian Pascu – Executive President of A.O.P.J.N.R. , which answers almost all the questions that are currently bothering a gambling operator in Romania. A must read!
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Cristian Pascu
How will the lack of extension of the transitional period affect the operators you represent?
The operators affected will be the many small and medium-sized operators in terms of the number of authorised machines, i.e. those who own the machines and who will not obtain the new TAs from the manufacturers. That is, all those who have felt the full brunt of the increase in the license fee from €20,000 to €75,000 and the authorization fee which, being a lump sum instead of a percentage of GGR, they feel is a higher cost of their income.
What does it mean concretely for them? Reducing the number of authorised machines, because the abrupt replacement of machines means that they have to buy new, rent or buy in instalments, but, in any case, a financial effort of about 2,000 lei/month/device. They won’t afford to replace the whole lot.
They lose, the state budget loses and the licensing fees.
There are about 20.000-25.000 machines that we estimate cannot continue in operation after the introduction of the new technical rules, most of them owned by the organizers, on which there is a “fight” between manufacturers to revive their marketing in a larger share, hence their eagerness to move as quickly as possible only to the new type of machines.
But one aspect that “impatient” producers would do well to consider:
If they try to force them by quickly dispossessing them of the machines they currently use, they actually have something to lose, because by operating for a while longer the current machines that are profitable and no longer cost them, these operators have the chance to accumulate financially to gradually purchase more of the new type!
By the end, if you don’t “force” them with an unaffordable offer, you will both benefit.
As never before, the ONJN did not publish its Activity Report for the previous year (2022) on its website. So, we don’t have any official information to tell us from a statistical point of view how the gambling market is doing in Romania. What do you think, what do the people in your association tell you, are they doing better or worse from 1 July 2022?
AOPJNR
We are waiting with great interest for the activity report of the ONJN for the past year, especially since, in the spirit of transparency and complete information necessary for all those involved, we have requested some significant statistical situations, possible to process and obtain from the information sent by the organizers, which we have not had since the year….2013, when the ONJN was established….
With mitigating circumstances for the current management of the ONJN, which is with an interim without all the necessary logistics and in a multitude of controls from various institutions plus dense parliamentary proposals for which the institution’s time and resources must be allocated.
As a conclusion, what will be will be, we currently have in Parliament initiatives with much greater disastrous effects, so that the controversy on Order 86 fell for a while in the background, but now returns, in the 13th hour, in the foreground and this normative act, which this time depends directly only on the ONJN, not the Government or Parliament.
Until the end, according to the attributes of our association, which is of the organizers and producers, we tried to negotiate in a way that all parties would gain or lose as little as possible…
Whether or not we succeeded remains to be seen. We know that in business there is first and foremost self-interest, but this is the role and sometimes the hard part of an association, to try to mediate between its members as well as with all the other actors involved.
As a motto to what I wanted to convey about Order 86 and beyond:
“Haste makes waste!” or “Greed spoils humanity!“
