Celebrating 200 issues of EGR (2002-2021)

When I stepped foot into the EGR offices above a cab firm in north London, it wasn’t immediately clear this was going to be a global leader in gambling media. An offshoot from a publisher focused on the offshore world, including some new-fangled thing called “hedge funds”, it was a fairly bootstrapped operation in those days. The full EGR editorial team was the sum of me and the initial editor, John. Fairly quickly after that it was just me.

This was way back in 2002 when Malta was still just a holiday island and bet365 just another sports betting site. Much like the industry itself, we grew rapidly, learned quickly and made up the rules as we went along. Amazingly, we didn’t even have a proper website. It was a print magazine for an online industry, but the addition of online news really changed everything for us. Well, that and one other thing.

It was on the way to a meeting with a software supplier with then EGR commercial director Caroline Steele that we sat down on a bench to drink a coffee and chat about an idea for a thing called the Power 25. At the time, the industry was opaque and shining a little light into some of the darker corners helped give the industry some identity rather than a disparate collection of offshore operators.

And that, more than anything, is what EGR has always looked to do. It tries to speak for the industry, as well as speak to the industry. It attempts to give some structure to the sprawling complex world of online gambling. And as the industry has gone from a few men on a beach in Antigua to boardrooms in the City it has moved with it but never forgotten what makes this industry unique.

EGR isn’t your typical trade mag. Because online gambling isn’t your typical industry. But both have changed beyond recognition. The balance of power has shifted from Canada, Costa Rica and the Caribbean to Gibraltar to Malta to the UK and back over the pond to the US. It has moved from grey to white and back and forth again, from suppliers to operators and from private money to public markets.

And as with all aspects of life, it’s the money that made the biggest difference. Online gambling has moved from small-scale entrepreneurs to large investment funds and perhaps lost some of its identity.

But this won’t be the end. This is an industry that is constantly reinventing itself and I can’t see it quietly shuffling into corporate conformity over the next decade. There is so much more this industry can still do and, really, we’re all just getting started, aren’t we?

Alun Bowden, former EGR editor