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Online Gaming, Italian Style
MILAN, Italy — Italians have been gambling on the lottery for centuries. Before the peninsula even became known as Italy, locals were playing some form of sweepstake; 16th-century Genovese, for example, bet on which nobles would be drawn for political seats.
Now it’s a state-run business worth 5.5 million euros a year, and it has just gone online.
Most Italians buy scratch-and-win tickets at the downstairs café, picking up the scratchers while getting a cappuccino or pack of cigarettes.
The new online system is supposed to save a trip to the café, but it has been designed to accommodate notoriously computer-phobic Italians — and now involves two trips to the shops.
Would-be players first sign up and pay at tobacconists, play online, then collect their winnings, if any, at post offices.
Italians are notoriously computer shy — only 31 percent regularly use the internet, according to Eurostat.
Though complicated even by Bel Paese standards it’s a timely move by the national gambling monopoly to hook bettors before a new law opens up the online gaming market in 2007.
The Italian media predicts a “British invasion” with the arrival of online poker and internet bookmakers, especially heavyweights like Ladbrokes and William Hill, whose sites were previously blacked out by Italian authorities.
Italians have had a 500-year love affair with the lottery, commemorated last year by a stamp portraying luck as a blindfolded blonde.
You need some of that luck just to buy a ticket. After about 10 minutes scrolling around, trying to understand how to enter a credit card number and try lady luck, I picked up the phone.
A suave female voice explained that to enter the fast-paced world of online gaming, there was a contract and pre-paid card to be obtained from select tobacconists.
Though the neighborhood is far from vice-free — it boasts one of the five pharmacies in all Milan to sell over-the-counter vibrators — there were none of these gaming establishments in my zip code.
Two tries later, a glittery gold card was mine for 10 euros from a tiny place festooned with betting slips and populated by a middle-aged man hunched over a video poker machine.
Once home, I didn’t bother trying to make sense of the contract but spoke with another velvet-voiced signorina who kindly completed the sign-up process over the phone and gave me a PIN.
Punters can use cell phones to add credit to the account and place bets on sports; they will soon be able to play via cell phone and digital terrestrial TV. Winnings can be put on a special lottery credit card or, for a fee, picked up in person at the post office with three days advance notice.
Way too much work for something meant to be a compulsively fun habit, but let the games begin: There are eight online scratch-and-wins to chose from, betting starts at just .50 euros, and the pot goes up to 500,000 euros.
Online lotto games are a micro-study in national character: The British, for example, offer board games like Monopoly or Scrabble, Italians wager on penalty kicks and Sette y Mezzo, blackjack’s continental cousin.
Scratch and wins aren’t games of skill, but Final Challenge, the Italian lottery soccer game, comes close. Point the cursor to place the penalty kick, then see if the goalie saves it. If he misses, the money under the soccer ball is yours. Good fun, but the booing of the crowd — it’s rarely a stadium cheer and meager winnings — ceased to give that World Cup rush after a few tries.
Total playing time: 14 minutes. Total winnings: 0. More Italian online lottery? Fugghedaboutit.
