Castilla y León gaming congress closes with call for sector dialogue

Ruth Andérez, director of institutional relations and external action at the presidency department of the Castilla y León regional government, closed the 19th Congreso de Juego de Castilla y León on 21 October at the Aula Magna Tirso de Molina in Soria, the organisers reported. The closing followed a panel titled "El jugador del mañana". Andérez, who had presented the congress days earlier, gave a positive assessment of the two days, which brought together representatives of the administration, companies and associations from the different private gaming subsectors.

In her remarks, Andérez said the congress had allowed participants to address matters of common interest "desde el respeto y la objetividad", and that different perspectives had been compared with the aim of better understanding the sector's reality. She reviewed the main debates of the two days. The first concerned the situation of the different business models and the question that opened the congress: whether gaming is undergoing a natural evolution or a deeper restructuring, which Carlos Duelo, Jesús Serrano and Rodrigo García addressed. She noted that hospitality venues, salons, bingos, casinos and betting share a context of transformation in which technology and new leisure habits require strategies to be reviewed and needs anticipated.

Andérez said adaptability would remain a decisive factor for the future, citing the effort of companies to maintain competitiveness, modernise products and respond to new customer expectations. She also focused on the future of gaming companies and the challenges they face to ensure continuity, naming generational handover, professionalisation of management, talent recruitment and the coexistence of tradition and innovation. Those subjects were addressed in the panel on the family business, with Mónica Palomares, Pedro García Cuestas and Eduardo Estévez.

According to Andérez, the value of the meeting goes beyond the presentations and debate panels, because bringing public officials, associations, business people and professionals into one space allows experiences to be compared and positions to be brought closer on questions affecting the whole activity. She said the true value of the congress lay in the conversation it generates, and thanked the business associations and representatives of the casinos of León, Salamanca and Valladolid, naming ASECAL, SAJUCAL, FAOCALE, ASEOCYL and ALACA.

She closed with a reflection calling for the debate to continue, saying the congress ended with more questions than definitive answers and that this was probably good news. The congress had opened on the Tuesday with an announcement by Luis Miguel González Gago, regional minister of the presidency, that the regional government will review the entire gaming regulation of Castilla y León, a region with 450 companies, 2,000 jobs and €60m in annual revenue.