UK Casino Providers gathered at the third Parliamentary Seminar in Westminster

Major UK casino operators gathered in Westminster, England, to take part in the Future of Casinos seminar. They all expressed similar wishes as to the necessity of improvement of the Gambling Act that controls UK casinos.

The main issues touched at the Seminar

At this third seminar held by the Parliamentary All Party Betting & Gaming Group the representatives of the four operators made their speeches, after which there was a question and answer session. The main issues touched by the executors were:

Casino providers expressed their dissatisfaction as to the three-tier structure that runs machines in gambling institutions;
The Gambling Act 1968 that restricts the casinos to not more than 20 machines;
The revenues received by European casinos are higher than the UK casinos’;
The need of amending of the casino tax system to bring it in line with other jurisdictions.

Grosvenor Casinos Managing Director Mark Jones told that the attendances of the casino increased in the last 5 years by 3.6 million, and more than three-quarters comes from London. The Hippodrome in Leicester Square and Aspers in Stratford gave 80%. He also criticized the Gambling Act 2005 that introduced the three-tier format to control casino machines.

Simon Thomas, Hippodrome CEO stressed that leading casinos of Europe get 90% of the revenues from slots: in France it is 80%, in Germany 80%, in the Netherlands 55%, in Spain 40 and in the UK only 15%. Roger Marris the Ritz Club CEO spoke about the necessity of changes in the casino tax system to make it correspond to other controls. He told that Barcelona has a higher duty rate for national gamblers, while a lower duty rate for international ones.