M ONT H I N M I NUT ES
RIGHT TO
MONTH IN NUMB3RS
No area is more beset by uncertainty than online
> Jason Chess > Partner at law firm Wiggin
1998
The year John O’Reilly, now MD of interactive at Gala Coral, was forced to sell Coral within six months when faced with a “request” from politician Peter Mandelson Read his exclusive column on p17
The House of Commons Committee on Culture, Media and Sport has concluded a broad report on the UK gambling industry. If one had to lift out any one section as representative, it would be paragraph 208 in which it asks the government to make up its mind about gambling and give leadership to the industry, noting that the DCMS failed even to mention the gambling industry in its Departmental Business Plan for 2011-15. Does the Budd Report mean anything now? Does the government still think gambling is a bona ?de leisure choice for adults or has it slipped back into the reluctant permissiveness of previous generations? The vacuum in leadership concerned the Committee. No area is more beset by uncertainty than online. The committee dissected the devastating effect of HM Treasury’s failure to work with the DCMS to integrate taxation policy with regulatory policy, causing “…almost every online gambling operator moving offshore whilst most are still able to advertise and operate in the UK”. The Committee expressed the forlorn hope that HM Treasury would in future “work with industry stakeholders to establish the correct level for online gambling taxation” and feared that its failure to do so would give rise to a UK “grey market” comparable to that which misjudged French remote gambling taxation has caused. The Committee was suitably shocked at the Full Tilt Poker debacle and not unreasonably sought assurances that no such disaster could happen under any future UK point-of-consumption regulation.
60
Number of issues out of 100 that the Smoking Gun has featured on eGR’s back page. Read the best of TSG on p128
years since UK ban was lifted on egaming firms advertising on TV. See p81
5
eGR: Has there ever been a point where you felt you had gone too far? KR: Nope, not even close.
Ken Robertson, head of mischief, Paddy Power
see feature p81
15%
Amount at which UK government set gross gaming revenue tax leading to an exodus to offshore jurisdictions, one of eGR’s biggest milestones of the last 10 years on p58
FACEBOOK, GAMES PARTNERSHIPS DIVISION
FAMILY TREE
Just weeks after denying it would ever consider real-money gambling, and eight months after eGaming Review’s exclusive story revealing the platform had entered into discussions with some of the industry’s best known operators, Facebook surprised everyone by partnering with Gamesys to launch its first ever cash bingo and slots games on 7 August.
14
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