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.
India didn't ban gambling.
India's PROG Act bans online money games with up to five years in prison — yet fantasy sports survives on the skill-versus-chance test. That line is the market now.
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.
Tanzania just introduced a 5% duty on betting stakes.
Zambia tried 10%. You know how that ended.
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.
Egypt is about to criminalize online gambling.
It has not licensed it first.
Britain built a law to protect consumers from illegal content.
It protected illegal gambling operators from detection instead.
Austria's cooling-off debate is framed as player protection.
The people lobbying for it are Casinos Austria and Novomatic.
Advertising drives players to licensed platforms.
Banning it helps the platforms that already have them.
A 1 euro stake limit does not remove demand.
It removes the player willing to pay more.
22 states.
Nigeria's Universal Reciprocity Certificate offers one licence across 22 states at 11% GGR. Fifteen states stay outside it, and the federal regulator is limited to Abuja.
93% of Uganda's Gambling Happens Online. The Licence Was Written for the Other 7%.
The numbers come from the regulator itself. 93% online, 7% physical. Uganda has 63 licensed companies across 2,078 premises. The premises are the supervisory model. The activity is somewhere else.
The Unlicensed Market Has a Licensing Body. It's Called Anjouan.
Anjouan Gaming clarified its licences are not universal authorisations to operate globally. The operators using them to serve UK and Australian players may have missed that memo.
New Zealand's 15-License Cap: A Market or a Guest List?
New Zealand is issuing 15 online casino licenses for a country of 5 million people. This is channelization, not liberalization. The closed-door model is spreading globally.
Every Gambling Licence Issued in Gabon Before 2026 Is Dead on July 8
Every gambling licence issued in Gabon before 2026 dies on July 8. The GDJ ran two presidential ordinances with no grandfathering. The real filter closed on March 2.
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.