He succeeds Jean-François Vilotte as head of the independent administrator for the French online gaming and betting sector and comes to the position with decent igaming experience gained as president of France’s Gaming Observatory.
In a statement, ARJEL said Coppolani was “conscious of the absolute need to protect players from the risks of addiction which are particularly acute to online gaming and anxious to offer operators that choose to be licensed optimal economic conditions, he will work towards finding the best balance possible between these two aims during his mandate”.
The new ARJEL president will be faced with a sizeable ‘to-do list’ as he goes through the files that have been piling up on his desk since Vilotte announced his departure in December.
From a sector-wide perspective, Coppolani will be called on to keep pushing for measures that could help a struggling French igaming sector: opening up of poker liquidities with other EU regulated markets, change of the turnover-based taxation system to gross profits tax and the possibility of widening the regulated products on offer.
Although realistically the possibility of any such amendments being enacted remains minimal for the time being, many of the current French government’s MPs were opposed to France’s igaming regulation of 2010 while the poker liquidity proposal was rejected at the end of last year.
Coppolani was also head the financial and economic control body for France’s Ministry of Finance and marries “a good knowledge of the issues related to real money gaming and strong experience in public, accountancy and budgetary management”, ARJEL added in its statement.
source : www.igamingbusiness.com
