What Can European Markets learn from the UK’s iGaming Sector?

When discussing Brexit in terms of the iGaming market, most experts believe that the UK will shoulder the biggest potential impact.

From the future of Gibraltar to a potential talent drain and exodus of UK firms from these shores, there is certainly a great deal of uncertainty surrounding Brexit and Britain’s lucrative iGaming market.

While the UK market may be disrupted after Brexit, however, it remains relatively robust and a true leader in the global space. Also, there are several lessons that European markets could learn from the UK, including the following:

The Need for Harmonised Rules

According to a recent, EU-wide public consultation on the future of the continent’s fast-growing iGaming industry, the market has reached the point where it must be governed by a harmonised set of rules.

This is definitely the opinion of Sigrid Ligné, who’s the Secretary General of the European Gaming and Betting Association (EGBA) and recently spoke to EURACTIV in a detailed interview.

“Online gambling is a cross-border market”, she said. “Consumption is cross-border as well. Clearly, there is a strong need for harmonised rules, and we believe that there’s good momentum for the EU to assume leadership in this area”.

It is hard to argue with this assertion, especially given the EU’s track record in creating single points of control and regulatory bodies across a wide range of commercial sectors and applications.

For example, the Commission has created standardised rules for both food import standards and financial market regulation in member states, so it is definitely capable of doing something similar in the iGaming realm.

To achieve this, the EU Commission could well follow the template set by the UK, which introduced robust but progressive legislation in the form of the 2005 Gaming Act.

The Labour government of the time also created an omnipotent and independent regulator in the form of the UK Gambling Commission (UKGC), which provides a comprehensive range of market services and operates as a single point of control in the marketplace.

Of course, creating this type of body to oversee 27 member states may be far more challenging, but it’s something that the EU must move towards if it’s to create a safe market that can scale successfully over time.

Focus on Promoting Responsible Gambling

Thanks to the clearly defined infrastructure of the UK market, the regulator has been able to drive responsible gambling and impose sanctions on operators that fail to protect their customers.

This has been borne out by the huge financial sanctions imposed by the UKGC since 2018, when it announced the safeguarding of potentially vulnerable players as its core strategic objective through 2021.

This has impacted on every aspect of the market, from the decision of operators to partner with responsible gambling agencies and the emergence of independent comparison sites for the most trusted betting sites in the UK.

The regulator has also imposed a diverse range of measures to help raise standards industry-wide, from the banning of credit cards (which are prohibited in some European markets and are still permitted in others) to the imposition of more stringent age verification measures on iGaming operators.

Not only this, but UK operators have invested heavily in responsible gambling tools and technologies, with some of the latest innovations enabling players to track their behaviour in real-time and utilise operator insights to highlight any issues before they become too challenging.

Of course, key stakeholders broached this subject at the latest quarterly meeting of  European Gaming body on June 10th, so there are signs that the market may be moving in the right direction as it looks to protect operators and players alike.

Offering Casino Games Under One Roof

As we have already touched on, gambling rules vary wildly from one jurisdiction to another in Europe, with Germany the latest to announce a relatively complex and detailed selection of guidelines.

The approach to slot gaming is particularly interesting, initially because the regulator has imposed a €1 maximum wager limit per spin. This is similar to the proposal put forward by the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for gambling-related harm in the UK, although the maximum threshold discussed here is £2.

However, it is interesting to note that Germany and some other European markets require operators to make slots and different forms of gambling available via different Internet domains, unless the site in question houses independent and geographically separate landing pages for each vertical.

While there are genuinely good reasons for this, it can have an adverse impact on the typical online gambling experience, particularly in terms of accessibility and navigating a particular operator’s site.

At the same time, this does not necessarily provide much in the way of protection for vulnerable players, so it may be a rule that regulators look to relax over time.

This is an important lesson to heed from the UK market, whose casino sites are incredibly easy to navigate and responsively designed to open across a wide range of devices.