Regulation round-up 15 April 2014
The biggest regulatory news from the egaming industry in the last seven days (9 April to 15 April 2014)
UK gambling chief dismisses black market fears
Jenny Williams says re-regulated UK market shouldn’t be compared to the likes of Italy and Spain
The UK market won’t suffer the same black market problems as Spain and Italy following re-regulation, UK Gambling Commission chief executive Jenny Williams (pictured) told eGaming Review.
In an exclusive interview, Williams dismissed fears the UK’s move to a Point of Consumption regime would result in a steep rise in unlicensed operators citing a vastly different operating environment to other major regulated European markets.
“Those markets have a very different offer with a much more restricted set of products,” Williams said of the Spanish, Italian and French markets.
“They’ve got, certainly in France’s case, a very high tax rate, so in the UK where we have got a very open market and a very broad range of products it’s much more like the Danish situation where they are very confident they have a small black market; we expect to be in the same position,” she added.
Mybet awarded 11.5m after lottery legal battle
Mybet has hailed its award of 11.5m in damages from German state lottery company Westdeutsche Lotterie as a “big success”, drawing the six-year legal battle to a close.
The Higher Regional Court of Dusseldorf has ruled in favour of FLUXX, a subsidiary of mybet, after it accused the German Lottery and Pools Organisation of preventing it from marketing its lottery agency operations in the country.
“We feel it is a big success that after years we finally were successful in this law case,” Stefan Zenker, spokesperson at mybet, told eGaming Review.
Seven days in regulation:
Blue Gem Gaming assets seized by Sheriff Gaming receiver
Casino software supplier Blue Gem Gaming has had its assets seized by the receiver handling Sheriff Gaming’s bankruptcy case, claiming them to legally belong to the defunct company eGaming Review understands.
The content has since been removed from online casinos hosting it and the company’s website has disappeared.
Attempts to contact the company by its PR agency have been unsuccessful.
Blue Gem Gaming, formed by ex-Sheriff Gaming staff, launched last month marketing content previously owned by Bubble Group.
Unlicensed Swedish TV ad spend on the rise
TV advertising spend by unlicensed operators has more than doubled over the past two years accounting for 64% of all gambling-related ad revenue, according to figures published by the Swedish Gambling Authority (Lotteriinspektionen).
The latest figures, compiled by Swedish market research company TNS Sifo, show that total spend by foreign operators topped over SEK1bn last year, a significant 108% increase compared to SEK521m (£47.5m) in 2011.
In comparison TV advertising investment by licensed operators only increased 44% to SEK617m during the same period. Total advertising spend by licensed and unlicensed gambling operators stood at SEK1.7bn in 2013.
Poll results: UK grey markets rule is unworkable, say eGR readers
The UK Gambling Commission’s requirement for operators to provide details of international revenues streams and evidence to prove its legality is unworkable, according to respondents to last week’s poll.
Almost half (46%) of readers voted ‘no’ when asked whether the rule was workable, while a further third (34%) said that while the objective is sound, monitoring it will be difficult.
The regulator has placed a threshold on its requirement, requiring operators to provide evidence if a single jurisdiction contributes more than 3% of total revenues, or more than 10% for companies with annual revenues of less than £5m.