GVC Holdings’ Director of Regulatory Affairs Martin Lycka offers an insight into the lives of the gambling industry’s regulatory experts.
‘Hic sunt leones’ – here are lions, is a phrase used in times gone by to denote unknown territories on maps. At the time of its first visionaries, there would have been no easier task than drawing a regulatory map of the online gambling world – pick a ‘lion’ and draw it real big. Fast forward twenty years and behold: the lion inhabited territory is shrinking further and further at a rather dramatic pace.
The erosion process started in parts of Europe and Australia many moons ago and is now being exported to the other parts of the world; even the American lion that appeared supreme a mere couple of years ago is being dislodged from its stomping grounds and replaced by regulation.
Ukraine and Panama have recently joined the fray; plans to do the same are afoot in Bolivia and Brazil. Kenya and RSA have been leading the regulatory charge in Africa. The map has changed from a sketch of the king of the jungle to a Gibraltar/Malta centric place and recently, and probably for good, to a colourful tapestry of domestic regulations.