“The show is still the most important exhibition in Italy in my opinion”, affirmed Baroni, who continued: “The one in Rimini is always very open and crowded with people coming from all over Europe and outside Europe as well, so I think it is very important being here. It is always a good occasion to be with our customers and make new business opportunities, so it’s very relevant to be here”.

He then analyzed the Italian market: “I think there’s a big difference if we are talking about the land-based market or online market. Land-based market In Italy is very challenging, this is because of a drop in the number of machines, from 400,000 to 265,000, which is a huge reduction and instability of this time, depending on payout, documents cost. Most of this happened very suddenly, so it’s not a simple time to work, the field is very hard to predict and make new plans for the future, this is why, as a company, we are investing quite a lot on VLT and online content, which is becoming more and more important for our company.

“We are also trying to open up new markets. For land-based markets, we are yet to release our first machine for the Spanish market, and next month we will assist to Fer Interazar in Madrid. Possibly we will have another cooperation which will bring us into the Netherlands, for land-based market. And regarding the online content, we are already present in Italy, but we are planning to land soon in other European countries and Latin America as well.”

With regard to future perspectives, he said: “I think what we need is basically stability; I think it is not a matter of rules, but considering what rules we will have in about ten years; then is up to the industry deciding which rules are interesting to decide keep on doing business; but it’s better to have bad rules for ten years rather than have different rules every six months,” he concluded.