The conference had arranged four successive working sessions, in which leading businessmen and professionals from the various gaming sub-sectors took part, as well as representatives of regional government whose mission is to regulate and control games intended for amusement and games of chance.

One of the most important objectives achieved at this conference was the issuing of a set of initiatives to be put forward as the basis for the forthcoming negotiations between the businessmen in the sector and the regional governments. A day before the Cofar conference started came the news of its admission to the CEOE – Confederacion Española de Organizaciones Empresariales (Spanish Confederation of Business Organisations) – the major Spanish employers’ association. Entry into the CEOE gives Cofar greater political weight within the tissue of Spanish industry in the political negotiations that take place at both national and international level.

The conference was inaugurated by the Vice Chancellor of the Treasury of the Madrid regional government, Enrique Ossorio, together with the Secretary General of the CEOE, Juan Jiménez de Aguilar, who informed the 280 people at the conference about the incorporation of Cofar as a full member in its own right into the employers’ association. In his inaugural speech, the CEOE representative, Juan Jiménez de Aguilar, officially welcomed the new members. After this the President of Cofar, Manuel Lao Hernández, reminded those present of the increasing importance of the gaming sector in 21st-century society, as much in terms of its economic as its social aspects, and he reviewed the main challenges facing the sector.

“The increasing appearance of all types of games, bets, lotteries, raffles and promotions is unstoppable, and regulating and controlling them seems to be running into very serious obstacles. Nevertheless we must not feel sorry for ourselves, but must learn to adapt,” asserted the Cofar President. “We need the traditional games to be regulated in such a way that they can compete with the new ones. Adapting the sector to the new situation is not only indispensable but urgent, and of necessity must be preceded by the regulatory changes to allow this to happen.”

After the president’s speech, Professor Luís González Seara declared the conference open, describing the scheduled working sessions which in the following days were to develop the subjects most requested by the professionals in the gaming industry. The first working session, chaired by Manuel Matamoros, the Secretary General of Omega, the Bingo association, analysed the position and prospects for regulated games – amusement machines, arcades, bingo halls, casinos – and the necessary legislative evolution that is required to adapt them to the leisure society.

The second session, chaired by Amadeu Farré, Cofar’s legal advisor, was dedicated to the analysis of unregulated games, in particular online betting. The urgent need to regulate them is evident, both in order to provide legal security to the members of the public who risk their money on them as well as for the businesses who want to take part in the activity legitimately, without resorting to setting themselves up in tax havens.

In addition to the working sessions, and in keeping with the custom started last year of inviting leading businessmen from the leisure market in Spain to speak, the lottery businessman Xavier Gabriel appeared next, and explained his success with the Bruja de Oro – situated in the Catalonian town of Sort – which has become one of the main points of lottery sales in Spain, and he encouraged the businessmen not to set themselves limits and to fly high in their aspirations. Gabriel is a pioneer in the sale of lotteries over the internet, being responsible for the internationalisation of the Spanish lotteries.

The third working session, which closed the first day, was chaired by the general coordinator of Cofar, José Sánchez-Fayos, and concentrated on the most burning problems of privately managed games and their possible solutions. Deserving special attention was the impact of the anti-tobacco law and the recent launch of the “scratch and win” card from ONCE, which Cofar has brought before the Spanish Supreme Court. The problems created by the interaction between the actual games and online games, and the possible ways of reconciling them, were also analysed.

In the last working session, chaired by Eduardo Antoja, Executive Vice President of Cofar and current President of the European gaming employers’ association Euromat, representatives from regional governments who are responsible for the regulation of gaming took part – those from Madrid, Andalusia, Catalonia, the Canary Islands and the Rioja region. The debate was preceded by a presentation of Cofar’s Decálogo 2006, a proposal for a series of measures directed at ensuring the vitality and profitability of the sector within a regulatory framework to maintain the balance between the different social groups.

Decálogo 2006 contains 10 proposals grouped into two broad areas – measures of a general nature and specific actions by sectors. Belonging to the first are: integral planning of the range of games and bets on offer; recognition and regulation of the companies managing the games; technical regulations that allow a greater freedom of creativity and a more effective control of the games; taxation in proportion to the profitability of each game; and a regulation covering gaming publicity under an ethical code that applies to all gaming managers, whether in the public or private domain. As regards the actions by sectors, the Decálogo proposals refer to the many technical innovations necessary to improve the present situation in the manufacture and operation of amusement machines; the development of a new catalogue of electronic games for bingo halls; differentiation of the products to be installed in amusement arcades; and rationalisation of the taxation and levies on the jackpots on casino machines – thus covering the demands of most of the professionals and businessmen who had come together under the protection of Cofar.

In closing the conference, Manuel Lao Hernández, acting in his capacity as president of the Cirsa Group, reminded everyone that taxation of traditional gaming is reaching confiscatory levels, and that the sector will not be able to survive without improvements in the regulations, accompanied by fairer taxation, without forgetting those regulatory changes that will allow businessmen in the gaming sector to have greater creative and broadcasting freedom.

“I do not want to change the sector’s activity,” he said. “This is our sector, the one of games in arcades, bingo halls, casinos or bars. Whoever wants to invest in online bets and games, fine! Perhaps I will do so myself one day. But it is clear that, in any event, it is a question of complementing, not replacing.” Finally, and to summarise the conference, he added: “We have come here to table those subjects on which we have been working for a year and now we must concentrate on two new tasks: to prepare for the next conference and do battle to obtain what we have proposed in this one.”

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