The Portuguese gaming industry offers a wide range of game products, shapes, and models to its target audience. Since the legalization of activity in the country, the Portuguese legislator has been able to adapt both to trends and consumer preferences and has allowed the offer of gaming products to be expanded in quantity and variety.
The most recent approval / creation of the guardianship is the scratch card of the heritage, which is nothing more than a new instant lottery game launched by the Portuguese government in partnership with the entity that holds the monopoly of the exploitation of this type of game of chance, in its territorial dimension - Santa Casa da Misericordia de Lisboa (SCML).
Regarding the model, the new scratch card whose official name will be “Do Património Cultural” does not present anything very new. It will be, it seems, an instant lottery just like all the others that can be found in many cafes, newsagents, tobacconists, and similar places in our country.
The innovation of the concept is related to the selection of the recipient and / or beneficiary of the revenues generated by the operation of this lottery, which in this case is the Cultural Heritage Safeguard Fund (FSPC). Regarding the proceeds, they will be used to support the costs of intervention to safeguard and enhance the heritage classified or in the process of being classified, according to the priorities defined by the Portuguese Government for each year.
In terms of annual revenue, it is estimated that the FSPC can raise around five million euros a year. This value, although not significantly high, may nevertheless be an important contribution to the recovery of the cultural heritage of a country that has in its monuments and museums an important component of attraction and differentiation of the tourist offer, which is so important in the current national economy.
Despite its launch taking place on May 18, 2021, the International Museum Day, the idea of creating this new game of fortune or chance is not new. According to what was announced, the initiative was scheduled to happen during the year 2020, but the contingencies of the COVID-19 pandemic and the complexity of the operational model prevented or hindered its implementation in the scheduled timings.
The launch of this new game product, despite the positive porpuse of the idea that underlies it, brings back the old discussion around tolerance to the industry of games of chance and reminds us of the common Anglo-Saxon classification that it is attributed - “Sin Industry” - together with other industries producing and exploring products and economic activities to which harmful effects are attributed.
If, on the one hand, we all recognize the importance of financing the safeguarding of the national cultural heritage, in a state with increasingly limited resources, we all also remember the countless (but perhaps little-known) studies published mostly in academic forums, which give us a note of a sharp increase in cases of pathological gambling or an increasing propensity, in the particular case, of the Portuguese people, to spend an increasing part of the meager family budget on the consumption of so-called social games, as happens with SCML scratch cards.
According to data published in 2020, Portugal will be the country in Europe where the most money is spent on scratch cards per capita, corresponding to more than double the European average. The introduction of more offer in the sector will certainly not help to slow the trend.
On the other hand, it would be important for studies to be able to confirm and identify this worrying top position in the European rankings. It would also be important to create mechanisms to protect players and their families, for example, similar to what exists for other forms of gambling such as land based and online casinos.
The creation of a player's card that could serve as a diagnosis and alert the player who is less aware of his bet history has long been suggested. On the other hand, there is an urgent need to establish a (self) exclusion mechanism that allows not only the players, but also their immediate family members, to end behavior that is harmful to the individual and the members of his household.
The social footprint generated by the revenues from games operated by SCML is indisputable, in many different sectors of Portuguese society, since the date when this entity started to explore the so-called “social games”. An excessively empirical reasoning perhaps leads us to conclude that the balance between the pros and cons of this type of offer of games of chance, easily accessible and somewhat indiscriminate, continues to be positive.
Nevertheless, the requirement and responsibility of those who govern us will be to ensure that games of chance fulfill their primary function - that of being a form of entertainment with an eminently playful nature and, at the same time, an activity that finances a significant part of the social economy, culture, tourism and so many other activities that, through this financing, come back to society part of what is spent by the gamblers, they too, part of that society.
In an era in which we have important mechanisms for data collection and control of economic activity, it would be important for the state to collect reliable, rigorous and sufficient information to enable decision making based on facts and effective behavioral trends and that it does not run the risk to make an idea harmful, such as the launching of the “Cultural Heritage” scratch card, which ab initio, would only have virtues.
Óscar Alberto Madureira, MBA
Portuguese Desk Head at Rato, Ling, Lei & Cortés – Advogados
Source: Arcada
