The news from Schleswig-Holstein following its recent elections couldn’t have been more confusing for online gaming operators.

David Loveday

The uncertainties caused, first, by the issuing of licences on the part of the outgoing government, and then the threat of rescinding those self-same licenses from the incoming ‘traffic light’ coalition of Social Democrats and Greens, has thrown a fog of confusion over the whole process.

But what becomes abundantly clear whether you are talking about Schleswig-Holstein, the wider German situation or indeed anywhere else in Europe, is that the process of moving towards regulation is never – unfortunately – a simple task of getting from A to B.

The confusion of the German process once again throws the spotlight on the difficulties of pre-judging anything when it comes to governments dealing with issues of regulation. From Germany to Greece, Spain and elsewhere, it often appears that with the regulation of online gaming we start from a state of confusion and proceed in this fashion right through to the end.

But such is politics. Gambling, we must understand, is a sensitive area of public policy and business decisions will inevitably be subject to challenge from politicians. It is a lesson that online gambling companies have to take on board as much as their land-based brethren.

In such ever-changing circumstances, the key for any technology supplier is flexibility. We have to be ready to handle the shifting sands of regulatory uncertainty as much as our partners.

We have been overhauling our OpenBet system over the past three years or more, and the net result is a system that has the capability to respond to the ever-changing regulatory landscape as it evolves.

Take SiteServer, for instance, the backbone of the sportsbook offering providing rapid access to prices of all fixed-odds events. The key to SiteServer is that it has been designed to reflect changes taking place in the operators’ landscape, giving them the opportunity to manage preferences and national settings to fit in with the demands of regulators.

Of course, regulatory change isn’t the only challenge that operators face, and the whole OpenBet system, is designed to help our operators overcome all the business, marketing and regulatory hurdles implied by the opening of a new market.