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Gaming
The continued growth of Gibraltar’s world-leading eGaming sector
The talk was all about collaboration, embracing new technology, and keeping customers safe, when industry experts met to consider the future of gaming at the KPMG eGaming conference,
dubbed ‘the Netflix of gaming’. Speaking at the 9th annual KPMG eGaming
conference, attended by 280 professionals at Gibraltar’s 5-star Sunborn Hotel, Peter Isola, senior partner of ISOLAS law firm, held: “The issue now is how gaming operators can use the opportunities presented by Google and Amazon cloud services: how, as a jurisdiction, can we measure the footprint to ensure we maintain the level of regulation that we have established.
“It is important to us that the gaming company’s footprint remains in Gibraltar economically.” Isola’s remarks brought into sharp focus behind-the-scenes activity to recast Gibraltar’s Gambling Act by the autumn to ensure it remains the premier jurisdiction for licensed online gaming companies and their suppliers.
“We still have the original remote gambling licenses”, Peter Montegriffo, a partner specialising in eGaming at Hassans law firm, noted. “The proposed reforms are not just about regulation of tech, but must also take account of substance requirements and tax developments. Some of the models adopted in other jurisdictions need to be reviewed. There should be renewed consultation before any final position is adopted,” he declared.
Basically, the issue is about servers and where they can be located and what each does. Andrew Lyman, Gibraltar’s Gambling Commissioner, explained: “The present licenses for gaming companies are predicated on location of technology and we want to maintain some regulatory discretion over what we do and don’t grant, so I think we will end up adding ‘mind and management’ to the legal criteria. Rather than drop the IT provision, we are more likely to say we want to retain discretion.”
Reviewing servers
Ten new licences were issued in 2018-9 to six companies, split evenly between gaming operators (B2C) and games developers & suppliers (B2B). Companies have significant resources and investment in Gibraltar, yet others, particularly start-up B2B firms, want to be on The Cloud, which potentially lowers operators’ costs to fund things like, compliance,
Ray Spencer reports But just below the surface, spoken only
sotto voice, was growing concern at how two US businesses - Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google – are limbering up to use the Cloud and enter
the eGaming market internationally. There is a perceived risk that the two firms
might gobble up US online gaming revenue – predicted to dwarf that of the UK and Europe
combined - and be transformative for the gambling industry worldwide, much as has been seen with online video streaming and terrestrial TV channels.
In January, Amazon was linked with development of a cloud gaming service streaming to homes and last summer Google revealed its xCloud, while Apple is interested too and Sony is trying to develop what has been
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10 Gibraltar International
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