A couple of big gaming companies are interested in a project called Hellinikon which is planned to become the biggest casino resort in Greece and overall the first integrated resort in Europe. However, the plan to grow the gambling sector is by heavily taxing the online operators who want to offer the online casinos service. In fact, every online casino operator will have to pay €5 million in order to get the license for operating in this country. This is a consequence of the new regulations that were voted on last week.
How it Got Done
There will be an international tender to get the casino license throughout October, but it seems that some of the companies are more interested than others. Just to name a few – Caesars Entertainment from the United States, Groupe Lucien Barriere from France, and the two Native American companies – the Mohegan Sun and Hard Rock. Apart from the firms mentioned, there are two more which were but mentioned by the Greek newspaper Ekathimerini. The paper stated that these two additional companies are still not certain whether they will enter the bidding game.
According to them, the two companies which are not sure whether to enter are Miura Holdings, which is a company that has headquarters in Las Vegas, and Clairvest Group, a firm for private equity management that is located in Toronto, Canada. The latter company has almost $1.7 billion of equity capital and they already have connections with the sector of entertainment and gambling.
There is an option of two investors to join forces and invest in the Greek project together. According to certain sources, it seems that Mohegan Sun is really close with Miura Holdings, which means that the two companies may apply together and share the cost of the project. The announcement for the tender will be in early October and the interested casino operators are already considering the regulations and taxes.
Online presence of the future casinos is inevitable, and the authorities want to introduce several new regulations. At the beginning of September, one could see that they plan to go big with the €5 million operators licenses for online casinos.
However, the tax is not the only thing that the gambling operators who have online casinos face. In fact, there will be plenty of more requirements that they must meet, as well as certain restrictions that they must respect. The Ministry of Finance in Greece published a set of regulations on September 11.
What’s Next
According to them, a sports betting platform will have to pay €4 million in order to get a license in this country. These permits will last for five years and will need to be renewed once they expire. Another requirement is that the casino operator must have a license in at least one more European country in order to get the Greek license. There will be also taxes for online wins. Wins under €100 will not be taxed, from €100 to €500 will be taxed up to 15% and the wins above €500 will be taxed at 20%.
