British gambling regulator wants more international collaboration
The Gambling Commission says it is close to signing MoUs with North American gambling regulators.
UK.- Tim Miller, the executive director of the British Gambling Commission, has reiterated a call for more international collaboration among regulators. Speaking at the Global Gaming Expo in Las Vegas, he said that collaboration would allow regulators to increase their impact and particularly efforts to eliminate unlicensed gambling.
He said: “The collective voice of gambling regulators across the globe pressuring big tech companies, banks and even some other jurisdictions to address the role they play in facilitating illegal gambling, will be much harder to ignore.”
He said that making gambling safer was “a driving force” behind the British government’s Gambling Act Review white paper. He said that today gambling regulations still vary greatly among jurisdictions, and that operator could be considered to be legal in one market but illegal in another. He said it was important that regulators understand each other’s rules.
“The more gambling regulators know of each others’ rules, standards and markets, the more we are sharing information and best practice, the more we support each other then the more effective we will be,” Miller said.
“This in turn makes it harder for uncooperative operators to circumvent a regulator’s regime or means they are more likely to face difficult questions in their home jurisdiction if they act poorly elsewhere,” he added.
Gambling Commission enforcement action
Miller said the Gambling Commission had already had some success with tools and services targeting illegal gambling. He said: “Over the last year we have focussed on working upstream to shut down the access that illegal sites targeting the British market have to our consumers.
“And through engagement and collaboration with payment providers, internet search providers and product and games developers, we have been able to deliver some dramatic results, with a 46 per cent reduction in traffic to the largest illegal sites coming into our market. But it also proves collaboration is vital.”
He also noted that the regulator had issued headline-grabbing record fines against licensed operators for failings, including £17m against Entain in 2022 and £19.2m against William Hill in March of this year. He said that according to research undertaken by an operator, the British Gambling Commission is responsible for 85 per cent of all enforcement action taken against gambling operators internationally. He said this was not intended as “some sort of brag”, since enforcement action meant “something has gone wrong”.
MoUs with North American regulators
However, Miller said the Gambling Commission’s actions will always be limited if they are restricted to the domestic market. As such, greater collaboration is needed.
He said: “While we are having results domestically, gambling is a global business. Leading operators are now multi-nationals. As more North American jurisdictions open up to online gambling or sports betting, we see more and more large British or European operators looking to establish themselves here, in your markets. And that’s why we think international collaboration is so vital between gambling regulators.
“We are also close to concluding a number of Memoranda of Understanding with US regulators, in order to establish clear working relationships that will support all of us to be more effective.”
