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The Hit Group, a leader in the management of Slovenian casinos, has decided to launch an assault on the Italian market. The gaming sector is preparing for a revolution: in the next few months the doors of hundreds of Videolottery halls will open throughout the country, using the latest generation of high technology slot machines to guarantee large winnings and high profits for the managers.
The Hit Group, a leader in the management of Slovenian casinos, has decided to seize the opportunity and attempt an assault on the Italian market. Last Wednesday the directors of the group approved the setting up of an Italian company, called simply ‘Hit Italia’. “The company will have the task of managing the various Videolottery gaming halls in Italy and attracting new customers to the Hit world - asserts the group in an official statement - this is an important step towards the Italian market”. Hit is now looking for a local partner with whom to commence the operation: the licences for the installation of 56 thousand 697 terminals, issued in August 2009 by the AAMS, are in fact in the hands of the ten leading companies in this sector in Italy. Likewise, the only way for Hit to gain access to the licences is to establish a collaboration with a licence holder, or to wait for a second wave of licences, something that may be a long way off. “At the moment we are assessing all the possibilities”, the group lets it be known. But if Hit does find a licence holder disposed to share the management of its licences, this company, that is well known to the frequent visitors to casinos beyond our borders, could soon become commonplace throughout the country.
This possibility is not at all remote: “Our group is open to possible collaborations with foreign partners - the group B Plus lets it be known- provided they are reliable and able to operate in the heavily regulated Italian market”. B Plus (the leading Italian licence holder with nearly 12 thousand licences) has already signed a collaboration agreement with Apex gaming, for the consolidated management of videolotteries across the Czech and Slovakian markets. “This move by the Slovenes comes as no surprise – comments Carl Pagan, former manager of the casino in Venice and executive director of the Campione d’Italia casino – videolotteries offer large profit margins and a number of international competitors are entering Italy. The competitive profile will become much more complicated”.
For the Hit Group, entry to the Italian market could be a way to obviate the downturns that it encountered last year. In 2009 the Group recorded a gross turnover of 243.5 million euro, of which 201.7 came from the casinos, but this compared to 2008 the net figure is down 28.5 million euro. The Hit Company, a founder member of the Omonimo group, had a 44 million euro loss in 2009. Moreover in the first four months of 2010 the company has lost 11.6% of its clients in comparison with the same period of 2009. The point of arrival in the promising Italian videolottery market would allow Hit to obviate the repercussions of the crisis.
