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How can the regulated gambling industry fight the black market?

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Do marketing restrictions send players offshore? Gambling trade bodies say restricting advertising for regulated operators helps illegal operators, while gambling opponents say advertising must be lowered to prevent problem gambling and exposing youngsters to gambling. 

Before we kick off, let’s clarify; when we mention offshore or black market gambling sites, we are referring to online casinos and sportsbooks that do not hold a licence in their jurisdiction. These unregulated sites expose players to various risks as safer gambling protections are not in place; they also remove tax and revenue from the formal market.

The “growing” global black market

The past year has seen a wealth of hair-raising statistics regarding the rise of offshore gaming in response to an ever-stricter regulatory environment. In February, the Betting and Gaming Council (which represents 90% of legal UK operators) commissioned research on the European and UK offshore landscape. In December, the American Gambling Association released its latest data detailing offshore gaming in the USA.

Both reports revealed that large amounts of revenue are being spent at offshore gambling sites rather than in the formal economy. PwC, who researched on behalf of the BGC, even went as far as to conclude, “whilst it is not possible to isolate the impact of individual regulatory characteristics, the assessment suggests that jurisdictions with a higher unlicensed market share tend to exhibit one or more restrictive regulatory or licensing characteristics.”

So what exactly does the black market look like in the European and American gambling markets?

Europe

  • UK: The number of players using offshore sites has doubled in two years, from 220,000 to 460,000.
  • Norway: 66% of gambling revenue goes to the black market. There are already stake limits, affordability checks and advertising bans in place.
  • Sweden: 38% of self-excluded players move to offshore casinos to keep gambling.
  • France: 57% of gambling is at offshore sites.
  • Italy: 23% of players use offshore sites.
  • Spain: the black market has a 20% share.

America

  • Americans spend more than $510.9bn yearly with illegal (unlicensed) operators. This costs the regulated industry $44.2bn in revenue, with over $13.3bn lost tax revenue.
  • The total offshore spending was broken down, with $63,8bn on sports betting, $337.9b on casino iGaming and $109.2 b on unregulated gaming machines.
  • This equates to almost 40% of the US sports betting market. Still, more shockingly, the illegal iGaming market is nearly three times the size of the legal iGaming market (only six US states currently allow legal online casino gaming – New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Connecticut, Michigan and West Virginia) and nearly half (48%) of Americans that have played online in the last year, did so at an offshore casino.
  • The report commented that the gambling industry was among the most regulated industries in the US; “Whether it is financial solvency and other licensing requirements, know your customer or anti-money laundering regulations, legal gaming operators and suppliers comply with thousands of laws and regulations designed to ensure consumer protections and confidence in the gaming market.”

Is an advertising ban on the cards?

The UK already has strict advertising and marketing rules in place for regulated gambling operators. These are currently governed by the 2005 Gambling Act, which states that gambling adverts must be in-line with responsible gambling rules and must not:

  • “Portray, condone or encourage gambling behaviour that is socially irresponsible or could lead to financial, social or emotional harm.
  • Exploit the susceptibilities, aspirations, credulity, inexperience or lack of knowledge of children, young persons or other vulnerable persons.
  • Suggest that gambling can be a solution to financial concerns.
  • Link gambling to seduction, sexual success or enhanced attractiveness.
  • Be of particular appeal to children or young persons, especially by reflecting or being associated with youth culture.
  • Feature anyone gambling or playing a significant role in an advert if they are under 25 years old (or appear to be under 25).”

Alongside these rules, operators, through the BGC, have also implemented the Code for Socially Responsible Advertising (which increases the standards that all operators agree to abide by and provides them with a range of measures that enhance the social responsibility of their advertising), and a whistle-to-whistle ban on sports ads (this has reduced the number of 4 to 17-year-olds by 97%).

In April this year, the Advertising Standards Authority also announced a ban on gambling ads featuring celebrities, sports stars and social media influencers popular with those under 18s. Hence, there are already strong marketing regulations in place, many of which have been created and led by operators.

Between 2005 and today, the government’s attitude to gambling has changed. In 2005, the Gambling Act made it possible for gambling adverts to air on TV after the watershed for the first time (lottery and bingo aside, these have always been able to advertise during any time of the day), reflecting the position that “gambling had become a mainstream leisure activity”. Now, regulations are seeking to curb advertising, and the government’s approach to gambling is increasingly one of public health.

For the most part, recent advertising rules have focused on protecting those under 18 from gambling exposure. It is, therefore, difficult to discuss the effects of more significant marketing restrictions further. However, it is safe to assume that if the Gambling Review restricts the regulated market and legal operators from targeting and reaching customers due to more advertising regulations, while illegal operators can, offshore revenue will increase.

To add flavour to this debate, we can look at other recent or potential future regulatory changes, such as compulsory spending limits and the prohibition of bonuses, to see how more regulation could affect offshore gambling.

Player responses to compulsory spending limits

Spending limits and per-player budgets are expected to be a major component of the Gambling Review. In Norway, these measures are already in place. Norway was once heralded as a shining example of a gambling jurisdiction with high regulation, but it now has a black market share of 66%, the highest in Europe, which the BGC research attributes to the increasing regulatory standards. 

In the UK, the BGC used a YouGov survey that asked gamblers what they would do if the UK introduced compulsory spending limits and affordability checks:

  • 67% of respondents would opt for an offshore site should this measure be introduced
  • 64% also said that they feared the increased use of illegal sites would trigger a rise in problem gambling. 
  • Lastly, 70% said they would not be prepared to conduct affordability checks (the poll did not define what was meant by affordability checks, which could affect the reliability of the answers, as there is considerable concern over this. 

Regulators have stressed that potential affordability checks would be non-invasive). The data gathered from this poll are pretty shocking and show quite clearly that UK players would respond to spending limits by leaving the formal market, despite the risks posed.

Bonuses under the regulatory hammer

The marketing of bonuses has been an area of contention for the UKGC. In the past, the Commission has updated the LCCPs to ensure that gambling sites advertise bonuses clearly and that the terms and conditions are easily understandable and explained. Furthermore, in 2022, they updated their guidance on fair terms and practices, highlighting problematic terms favouring operators. They also underlined high wagering requirements as causing excessive play and urged operators to review their bonuses and fall in line.

However, some anti-gambling campaigners believe an outright ban on player promotions is the way forward, despite, according to the BGC, 69% of customers disagreeing and one in three gamblers saying they would consider black market betting if promotions and bonuses were banned at licensed online gambling sites.

Banning all bonuses is an extreme measure, and we would argue unwarranted, as there is a better way forward, which is well demonstrated by the many examples of affiliates and operators promoting bonuses that are fair and do benefit players, such as free spins with no wagering requirements. Bonuses are a large part of the player experience when gambling online, and while there is a need for some regulation, such as capping wagering requirements, an outright ban is likely to damage the legal industry and undoubtedly give more reasons for consumers to move to the illegal market.

As bonuses are such a vital area of an online gambler’s experience, it’s unlikely we’ll see an outright ban in the upcoming Gambling Review. However, it’s probable that high wagering requirements will be covered and restricted as well as more rules regarding how bonuses are advertised.

Do consumers know the difference between onshore and offshore?

Theoretically, if legal gambling sites are regulated to the point that they cannot advertise, while offshore sites can, it’s likely that players will opt for the offshore site purely through exposure. What’s more, distinguishing between a legal and illegal gambling site is no easy task for many players.

The American Gambling Association found during their annual survey for 2019-2020 that there was “widespread confusion” between legal and illegal operators in the US. Although 74% of respondents said it was important only to use onshore sites, 52% had gambled offshore, and 55% of those who bet offshore believed they were using a US-licensed site. Meanwhile in Sweden, only 10% of players are able to spot a licensed vs offshore gambling site.

This prompts the question; are players making a conscious choice to gamble offshore, or is it simply that offshore gambling sites seem more attractive due to their lack of adherence to gambling laws? And if consumers are simply picking sites based on the product and services, then the alternative to illegal gambling must be competitive and attractive.

Do more restrictions mean safer gaming – the prohibition fallacy?

Anti-gambling lobbyists and campaigners have for a long time purported that more regulation means increased safety and protection for players. Still, according to the research presented by gambling trade bodies in multiple markets, this doesn’t seem to hold valid, and it could, in fact, have the opposite effect, providing more stimulus to gambling offshore.

For operators, proportionality and an evidence-led approach are the way forward. Regulation needs to offer protection without removing player choices and the central element of online gambling – the fun. Plus, regulation shouldn’t be overly invasive because if and when it passes this tipping point, the black market begins to present a more attractive option for players, offering what seems to be better products, bonuses and games.

While we cannot give a concrete answer as to whether more marketing restrictions on regulated gambling help the black market, we can undoubtedly advocate for regulators to take note of the growing offshore economy in response to heightening regulations, whether that’s concerning the market or other areas. On top of this, the whole industry must also work harder to ensure that players can discern legal and safe gambling sites from those that are not.

Industry News

Entain Examines Possible Sale of Overseas Gambling Brands

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Entain has hired advisers to oversee the possible sale of several of its overseas brands, according to reports.

These brands include Netherlands-based BetCity, which the gambling firm had bought last year.

The Netherlands, last year proposed a plan for tighter deposit limits from the second quarter, which is expected to hit Entain’s annual revenue and profit, the company said earlier this month.

A local offshoot of Ladbrokes in Australia, Sweden-based Enlabs and Georgia-based CrystalBet are other brands that are not integrated into Entain’s main tech platform and under review, reports said.

Wall Street boutique advisory Moelis is advising Entain’s board and the group’s recently formed capital allocation committee, and any disposals will be of brands that are not integrated into the company’s technology platform, which makes them easier to sell.

Entain, like other gambling firms, gained from a rise in online betting during the pandemic, but stiffer regulations in its main markets have hurt its bottom line.

The UK, the gambling firm’s largest market, is expected to put out a review this year, which is said to include a stake cap on slots at 5 pounds ($6.37) and increased affordability checks.

Entain expects its core profit to incur a 40 million pounds hit in 2024 from the regulatory moves in the UK and Netherlands.

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Industry News

The RNG scaling problem

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The RNG scaling problem
Reading Time: 4 minutes

 

By Lorenzo Nardini, Head of Technical Compliance and Maths Services, at ComplianceOne Group

When I was a child, I lived in Italy and I used to play some card games with my friends. There is a huge variety of Italian traditional card games: Briscola, Scopa, TreSette are only a few of them. All these games are played with an Italian deck of cards, which consists of 40 cards divided into four suits, each containing ten cards ranked from one to ten. (If you are not familiar with these cards, I suggest searching them online as their artwork is beautiful and it varies across the different regions of that country). Most of the games I played required an equal distribution of cards among the players. This was easily done when playing in two or four as each player would get respectively twenty or ten cards each. However, when we played in a group of three, a problem naturally arose: how could we equally split the deck since 40 is not a multiple of 3? Fortunately, this was not a difficult problem and for most games it was perfectly acceptable to simply remove (reject) one card from the deck and then to assign the remaining ones in 3 groups of 13.

Later in life, I discovered that this seemingly childish problem was a recurring issue for gaming companies seeking certification for their Random Number Generators. In the gaming industry, the generation of random numbers is a core element that enables gaming platforms to produce unpredictable events. In this regard, RNGs are the engine that games use to decide, for instance, the final position of the symbols in a slot machine, the cards that will be dealt in a Poker or Blackjack hand, or when the plane will crash in the recently popular Crash games.

Each Random Number Generator is unique in terms of its components and the applications for which it is designed to generate random events. You can have a software RNG that is based on famous (in this community) algorithms such as the Mersenne Twister, you can have cryptographically strong solutions that take entropy from random events. I even once read a short paper about a “banana” RNG based on the natural decay of potassium atoms inside that fruit.

Regardless of the basis of your RNG solution, it will most likely generate unscaled random numbers. The most typical format is probably the 32bit which means the RNG returns a number between 0 and 232-1 (that is 4,294,967,295). This range is typically too large to be directly employed to generate game events: most card games require numbers between 1 and 52 as that is the standard deck size, numbers for slot machine outcomes typically range in the hundreds or thousands, and if you simply need to decide where the ball will land in a virtual single zero roulette, you simply need to request a number between 0 and 36.

How to then use the 32bit number to create outcomes for all these games? Assigning a number from the “large” range to one in the “small” range is called “scaling”. There are several methods to perform this operation and, in order to comply with jurisdictional standards, most countries require that the scaling method is performed in such a way to not introduce any bias, that means that all mapped numbers (also known as final outcomes) have the same probability to occur.

This is, in fact, the same problem that I was facing as a child when trying to equally split the deck of cards. And in the same way, this is easily solved when the large number (232 in our case) is a multiple of the target range, though this is seldom the case. This is exactly where I have seen multiple suppliers of RNG solutions failing their testing: ignoring that the target range not always divides the unscaled one results in having final outcomes that are not equally likely. Effectively, this means that when playing a roulette game, it is more likely that the ball lands on 0 rather than on 36.

However, the same solution I used as a child when playing cards in a group of three can be applied here: simply discard/reject some values until we are left with a multiple of our target range. For instance, if you need your RNG to generate numbers for a slot game in the target range 100 because such is your reel length, you first get an unscaled number in the 32bit format (that, remind, is 0 – 4,294,967,295) and then you discard it in the unlikely event that this is at least 4,294,967,200. All remaining numbers are then equally mapped to the target range by taking the remainder of their division by 100 – which simply means you take its last two digits.

To many, this might seem like a trivial problem. Yet, I was surprised by how frequently I encountered this exact issue when testing RNG solutions. The issue had to be reported to the supplier, failing their testing, that meant that they eventually had to rewrite some portion of their code, make a new submission and, all in all, spending extra budget and time for something that can be easily avoided.

While the RNG scaling problem may seem simple, it’s just the tip of the iceberg. There are far more complex issues in the world of RNGs that require expert guidance. Understanding these problems is the first step towards improvement. If you’re looking for someone who can not only assist you in navigating these challenges but also help you understand them in a clear and accessible way, I’m here to help. Let’s work together to enhance your RNG solution and make your gaming platform stand out.

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Industry News

Flexion “Direct-to-Consumer” Talks with Top Mobile Game Developers at GDC Will Define the Future

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Executives from Flexion, the games marketing company, will hold a series of summit talks with top developers at GDC in San Francisco (18 to 22 March 2024) to discuss how direct-to-consumer (D2C) services could enhance revenue.

The D2C’24 Summit will focus on the opportunities offered to developers by recent moves freeing up the mobile games market and, in particular, on new routes to user acquisition. The aim will be to align the industry on the best way forward in light of changes in the app stores.

Flexion is already the leader in accessing alternative markets including Amazon, Samsung, Huawei, Xiaomi, Aptoide, DT Hubs and ONEstore, boosting revenue for top games without upfront costs or significant effort. It is building on its partnerships with these platforms and other industry leading companies from UA to 3rd party billing to meet future developer needs.

“We have many years of experience and the know-how in taking an existing game and finding new revenue sources. We have also built partnerships across the industry – including with alternative app stores – that will allow us to help developers go much further in future,” Jens Lauritzson, CEO of Flexion, said.

In the last quarter, Flexion saw a 64% increase in its own revenue, as an increasing number of developers took the plunge into alternative markets. Through working with Flexion, developers see a more than 10% average boost in revenue (over marketing in Google Play alone) without significantly adding to their costs.

Jens said: “Developers have been frustrated by difficult user acquisition, where it is challenging to achieve positive returns due to changes in tracking and high store fees. But with the DMA in Europe and court cases in the US forcing Google and Apple to ease their stranglehold on the mobile games market, now is an excellent time for developers to re-engage directly with consumers.

“Many will hesitate at the underlying complexity and size of investment needed to exploit these opportunities, and so third-party services, like those being developed by Flexion, are going to be vital in making the ROI figures work.”

Through the D2C’24 Summit, Flexion will canvas opinions and share its ideas on direct-to-consumer marketing with top developers. The goal will be to create a consensus on the tools and services developers will need to maximise returns.

“We’re at the edge of a step change in the mobile games market and it’s important for the industry that we get things right. That’s why we’ve invited developers to these talks, and I’d be happy to hear from anyone else who would like to contribute to the discussion,” Jens said.

Ben Anquetil’s appointment as Head of Business Development is an important part of Flexion’s future-focused strategy. He has a brief to evaluate the company’s value proposition for D2C with the aim of ensuring that developers generate better return on their marketing spend going forward.

“I’m delighted to welcome Ben to the Flexion family at such an exciting time. He has a wealth of experience in the alternative distribution space and in strategic initiatives that generate more revenue and audiences for developers. With his help, Flexion will grow a whole new aspect of its business, offering developers easy access to the burgeoning range of markets that will become the norm,” Jens said.

“I foresee amazing opportunities for developers. By using D2C services, they will be able to enhance user engagement and retention for their games while improving margin. These factors will give them the freedom to grow revenue and audiences,” Ben said.

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