Having spent the past year examining the regulatory minefield of the gaming sector, Heather Woodward tells iNTERGAMINGi how companies can overcome the myriad of legislative hurdles

What are the biggest issues facing the  i-gaming industry at the moment?

The online gaming industry has had to face, in common with other business sectors in recent times, huge political upheaval and an economic downturn combined with a myriad of legislative hurdles that look set to remain well into this year. As the market has evolved we have witnessed industry powerhouses investing huge sums of capital into their online gaming arms. Market leading technology and powerful branding has made this sector fiercely competitive. With the ongoing liberalisation of gaming regulation across Europe, governments have had to collectively review the enormous variation in their national licensing regimes, which take differing approaches to a whole host of topics including taxation, technical and application conditions, player protection, advertising, as well as the handling of fraud and money laundering. We see harmonisation as a key challenge for both operators and regulators going forward.

Over the past year I have examined the regulatory minefield of the gaming sector, specifically focusing on the increasing burdens placed upon compliance teams to ensure they are up to date with complex and ever changing legal requirements. Compliance objectives are in general being taken seriously, but more could be done.

As new markets open up across Europe and each country introduces further stringent regulatory controls, the gaming community needs to improve its internal processes to ensure full compliance. The industry needs to consider whether it has the technology and resources in place to safeguard against criminal activity and it needs to streamline its internal procedures to mitigate against all areas of risk. 

There is no room for complacency as more jurisdictions open and more rules are created to provide regulators with the leverage to deliver tough penalties for non-compliance. We only have to look at what happened in April 2011 and the fallout from the Black Friday indictments.

This feature can be read in full in the first 2012 edition of iNTERGAMINGi.