Notes from the floor
Honest, unfiltered thinking on iGaming - platform selection, CRM, compliance, African markets, offline-to-online, governance. From someone who's been in your chair.
Prediction Markets Are Not New. They Are Better Dressed.
France's regulator already called it illegal gambling. Ten more European countries agree, and so does the EU's securities regulator. Kalshi's CEO is headlining a 2,500-person summit anyway.
The UKGC set a June 30 deadline.
The UKGC gave operators eight months to build Phase 2 deposit-limit standards, then pushed the deadline to September 30. The extension is a pattern, not news.
Entain paid £750m for STS Poland in June 2023.
Entain paid £750m for STS Poland in 2023. Three years later it is exploring selling Entain CEE back to EMMA Capital. The markets didn't change. The math did.
EGBA members committed to alignment on the day the standard was published.
EN 18144 gives Europe its first common standard for behavioural markers of harm — nine markers, cross-border, voluntary. Who wrote it matters more than what it says.
Your platform is licensed in Malta.
Your players sue you where they live.
The fine is not a technology failure.
The technology worked exactly as the operator intended it to.
Lowering the tax rate is the easy part.
Writing the law correctly is the governance test.
Ireland got its gambling regulator.
Betfred left. The unlicensed operators didn't.
Austria's cooling-off debate is framed as player protection.
The people lobbying for it are Casinos Austria and Novomatic.
Greece Counted 799,000 Citizens in the Black Market. The Bill Answers with Takedown Powers.
The EEEP gets authority to identify illegal gambling content and order its immediate removal. The black market takes €1.6–2bn from the Greek economy. Nearly one in ten Greeks gambled on an unlicensed site at least once. The bill answers the supply. Not the demand.
Austria Isn't Opening Its Market. It's Sending You a Bill.
Austria's draft online gambling law opens casino licensing past the Win2day monopoly — but requires every applicant to settle outstanding Austrian court judgments and pay retroactive tax. The deregulation reading is wrong.
Norway: A Different Theory of Problem Gambling
Norway published a four-year problem gambling action plan. No changes to legal access. No new betting limits. No advertising bans. That is a specific policy philosophy.
UK RGD Doubles. The Tax Picks Winners.
April 1. The UK doubled its Remote Gaming Duty from 21% to 40%. Flutter's UK CEO said it on the record: 'We'll take share from those who can't absorb it.' Read that sentence again.
Seven Markets, Seven Directions. The Balkan Gaming Federation.
Seven Balkan countries signed a Memorandum of Cooperation. The agenda: fight illegal gambling, align best practices. Each is also running its own regulatory experiment in a different direction.
Romania Consolidation: CEE's First Domino
Super Technologies acquires MaxBet Romania. The headline reads like a single transaction. It isn't. It's a phase change.
Sweden's Credit Card Ban Is a Compliance Event. It's Also a Product Event.
Most operators treated the Swedish credit card ban as a compliance milestone. What it actually is: a backend infrastructure test, and a CRM model drift event most won't notice until Q3.
The Channelization Paradox
Germany has 11 illegal operators for every licensed one. Channelization is a product design problem at the regulatory level - not a policing problem.
The Concession Trilogy
OPAP builds. Danske Spil optimizes. The third model extracts. Same structural advantage, three outcomes.
Germany: 77% or 50%? The Number Nobody Disputes Is 17%.
Two numbers are circulating about Germany's online gambling market. The regulator says 77% channelization. The operators' association and the University of Leipzig say 50%. The black market grew 17% anyway.
The First Operator Has Entered Finland. Who's Next?
Finland will have 40 to 50 licensed operators. The number who were actually ready will be smaller. We'll find out in 2028.