iGaming Daily

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As a breakneck 2024 comes to a close, iGaming Daily begins its end-of-year review by dissecting iGaming's European affairs. The anticipation of change was in the air as Europe contested 21 general elections during the year. That's if you include the sham in Russia. Despite the anxieties surrounding these political changes, European gambling has begun to see regulatory resolutions and determinations in the UK, Ireland, Sweden and the Netherlands. Furthermore,

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Positive revisions have been undertaken in the markets of Italy and France, withstanding further governments' upheavals. So, what does the close of another chaotic year mean for European gambling and its outlook? I'm Martin Elliott and welcome to today's iGaming Daily, brought to you in partnership with Optimove, the number one CRM marketing solution for the iGaming industry. And I'm delighted to be joined today by Ted Menmure.

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content director for SBC and by Victor Kayed, senior business journalist working on SBC News and Lottery Daily. Well, hi Ted, how are you? Back again. Back again, yeah. The IGD keeps on interrupting my Christmas guys, how could you? Yeah, it's terrible. Did you, I know you were very keen to get a bottle of Donald Trump's Fight Fight Fight fragrance for Christmas. Did Santa bring that at all?

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No, I wasn't aware that you had a... Actually, I wasn't aware that you had any fragrances. Oh yes. I looked into that. Yes. Yeah. If there's any cheap tat or gift, you can be pretty sure that the incoming president of the United States has his name attached to it. Okay. Okay. And Victor, how are you? Enjoying Christmas back in Bulgaria? Yeah. Yeah. It's nice and sunny out there. I'm not sure how the weather is looking over

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over there with you guys but yeah I'm looking forward to the holidays seeing some friends family and yeah everything good I hope you you have plans already made and yeah we're gonna have a good time as well. Yeah we'll be doing and it won't surprise you to know that it is cold and damp in Manchester back here so you're not missing much so. Anyway Christmas chit chat out of the way let's

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Let's begin with our home market in the UK. You know, the gambling review is sort of been taking shape over the course of the year and its changes are being implemented, which, which is a positive after so much talk over so many years. But Ted, Ted, how has the industry reacted to these changes and their implementations? So let's begin with the context. Look, there can be no doubt that in 2024 UK gambling is looking at its first kind of resolutions and determinations of the gambling review's white paper.

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and how they're being implemented. And this has been a minimum of a four year regulatory process to get to. And as it stands, we're now looking at the pilot program on deposit limit threshold, state limits applied to slots, the statutory levies designed and being determined for research, education, and treatment, and to be undertaken by the NHS. So to an extent, resolution should be seen as progress, but...

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I feel that the industry does have a right to be concerned and to be anxious about how the applications and measures will be applied and how it changes the dynamics that play for the industry and its engagement with customers and its wider interplays. This has been seen especially in the case of the deposit limit thresholds with regards to UK racing and rural stakeholders.

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how will that play out with the third sector and what it's already been built in terms of problem gambling treatment and treatment and intervention. So again, resolutions are coming, which are good, but there's just so many kind of interplays at stake.

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concern within the third sector, it's fair to say. In organisations that have been doing this stuff very effectively with the help of funding from the industry for a number of years are concerned they're being frozen out, which would be a slightly worrying development for them, I think. Toby Hayes But again, on the flip side, you always have to go back and just remember that this is a generational review with generational determinations. And there's always going to be a reaction.

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there will be winners and losers. And that's the regular determination, but at least it's getting somewhere. Sure. Sure. Certainty definitely helps, even if it isn't the certainty you want at the end of the day. So, I mean, the other big change outside gambling that we saw in 2024 was a new government. And, you know, this review started several flavors of conservative government ago, and now we have the Labour Party in charge.

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Do we know what their focus is on with the gambling industry? They've changed the setup a bit in terms of the ministerial responsibilities and so on, but I haven't seen much sign yet that they're changing from the policies laid out or the recommendations laid out in the Gambling Act review. For me, look, there's consensus that the Gambling Review's recommendations stand to be

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But I feel kind of that this Labour government is taking a greater oversight on industry conduct and consumer redress. And by conduct, it's primarily going to focus on, I think it may kind of go back to reviewing the advertising agenda of the gambling review. But I think what Stephanie Peacock, what the new gambling minister...

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And these Nandi have said is that, you know, consumer redress is at the forefront of all kind of DCMS sectors and how how that will be applied. I think this is a labor government that really wants to apply like a new level of fairness in the gambling sector, in how kind of operators engage with the consumers and that the consumers feel safe and that they feel that they're in safe environments where the trust level in gambling has increased.

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It's actually not, it's not a bad kind of determination to go to. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that should be the consumer protection and unfairness quality for consumers should be at the forefront of all this stuff, which I think the tier one operators already recognize, accept and do a lot towards that. But you know, they're far from being the only players in the industry, of course.

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Quite interesting in Baroness Twycross, the gambling minister's speech to, I think it was the Gamblerware Conference at the start of this month. She touched on white labels a little bit and that sponsorship of football teams and so on in the UK and sort of hinted that there might be some changes coming now, which would be an interesting development, but perhaps more for Premier League football clubs than for the gambling industry itself. But we'll see how that plays out.

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kind of can sit on a kind of pedestal and say, look, we are going to develop a kind of progressive measures and progressive protections for gambling. But it's just a trickier and trickier agenda because I think they are going to gather more and more stakeholders and it's harder to kind of define what are positive outcomes for the industry as a whole. So again, I think from 2025 to 2026, the review of the actual gambling review itself, its outcomes.

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that's going to be kind of the key point of focus for the industry. Yeah, yeah, I think so. So just to round off on the UK, which Ted, certainly you and I appear to have spent much of the last 12 months talking about. How do you think the changes leave the sort of competitive landscape in the UK now? I'm going to talk about kind of a pale sea level. And it's just, look, if you look at all the

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financial reports. The incumbents have spent hundreds of millions making pre-market adjustments to compliance, customer care, ML procedures, and how they take care of customer accounts. It is a more safeguarded industry. Now that we have, to some extent, the determined measures that are being applied by the Gamma review, would it open up?

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the market competition, I'm not so sure. But I now think that UK gambling now is really just focused about efficiencies and cost controls and who can apply those best. It's a much tougher outlook for grabbing market share. I'm not yet sure whether we expect to see kind of massive changes in the competitive level of the industry.

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No, I'm with you on that. I think the more regulation you bring in, that favours the bigger players with the bigger budgets, the bigger back office teams who can implement these things. I can see a situation in maybe three or four years where you have the big guys, the Flutter brands, Bet365, Entain's brands. And then below that, you're going to have to be doing something special, something unique that stands you apart and gets you a little niche in the market.

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increasingly difficult for mid-level generalists to stay in the market and make a profit. We'll see. I've been wrong about many things before, Victor, as I'm sure you know. Victor Nguyen – I've been wrong about a lot of stuff this year. Will Barron – Yeah. Well, what about you, Victor? How do you see the picture in the UK developing? Victor Nguyen – I agree with you guys in terms of when we're talking about POC level.

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talking about the consumer perspective and whether or not the market is moving towards good. I think the answer to that is yeah, absolutely, because with all of these changes, we now have the highest level of compliance that the UK has ever seen. Sustainable business models are going to come to the forefront more and more.

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These are going to be the optimal business models now moving forward. Those operators that have been sustainable so far will keep doing the same. Those who haven't, I think we will eventually either become sustainable or risk falling out of the race. And at the end, we will have a, I think we'll have a competitive market driven by

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long-term business practices that really plan ahead, of course, with revenues remaining in focus, but these revenues are going to be built on a more sustainable module. Sure. Sure. That's good. Thanks then for, I think, let's draw a line under the UK and turn our attention to our friends over the other side of the channel.

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and I don't just mean France, I mean the whole of continental Europe here. So Victor, let's start with you. What's been your market to watch throughout 2024? Well, I'm going to be I'm going to give you an obvious response. It was Bulgaria, where I'm from. There there was a lot of changes over here throughout the year. They especially picked up the pace in the.

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months of April and May. This is regarding a policy change, policy shift in the country's gambling act. The biggest one that we've seen over a decade. It started with an initial proposed draft at the end of the year that was neglected for quite some time and then in April it surfaced back.

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The changes gathered relatively big support from the political parties. And they referred to specifically the most affected aspect in the gambling sector from these changes was advertising. And while before them, companies could advertise.

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literally freely everywhere, whatever they wanted to, traditional media outlets, TV, radio, during peak hours, they could advertise outside, bus stops, billboards. There weren't any restrictions really on that level of advertising. With the new framework, much more strong restrictions were brought in.

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And there was also the banning of land-based venues in towns that have under 15,000 occupants. It was a measure that was similar to what Romania did earlier this year as well, where they banned venues in towns under 10,000 citizens.

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So there's been a huge, huge development in terms of gambling frameworks in Bulgaria. We've covered it all. I've sat through all the commissions and two hour long commissions, parliamentary debates, parliamentary debates, and we've covered it on SBC News. So yeah, that was the market that I was most busy with this year. Yeah.

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produced some really strong coverage on that, which we didn't see much in the English language press anywhere else. And there was a really good interview with someone from the regulator in Leaders magazine as well. So we've definitely been keeping people up to date with that. Ted, what about you? What was your sort of European market to watch this year? I've been thinking about this all month, leading up to this podcast. And it was really coin flip.

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between France and Italy and I'm going to pick Italy because believe it or not, Italy appears to be the most stable government in Europe. Yes, remarkable, isn't it? And a government that is now... For some reason, I believe that we had eight elections in four years. Yeah. And it is a government that is revising.

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It's gambling laws and it's sticking to an agenda and it's delivering on time It's schedule. Sounds too good to be true. And it's remarkable really because I mean this is you know, they are going through Kind of 10-year revision. They've done the online changes. They're applying kind of a new licensing scheme. Okay, not everyone is pleased But apparently it's I think it's a new platform for the Italian market also, who's gonna be there and I think that they are

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kind of constructing a much tighter framework on the processes of how you actually regulate gambling and what is effective, you know, what can gambling bring to the state, effective taxations, effective on the licensing authority. So yeah, it's been strange because I mean, I've always kind of reported on Italy as being a nation in chaos, but it's kind of changing, it's very much kind of changing its direction on gambling.

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and building kind of positive progressions and doing that with the oversight of Italian media, Italian sports. So for me, it's been the market to watch. Yeah, it's interesting stepping outside gambling. I would say the most interesting general news story of the year has been Italy emerging as the most stable country in Western Europe. Can you imagine, if you think back to say 2008 or

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2010, something like that. If you'd said Italy has the most stable government, Spain and Greece have both got really strong growing economies, people would have thought you were on drugs if you came out with that, but that has kind of happened. Times change, times change. Yeah, but I think this really highlights the changing social and political narratives of Europe and how they kind of reflect on gambling regulation or the regulation of any industry and the anxieties of the countries that they hold.

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towards their own economies and their own sectors competing in globalised world. So this is what I actually find the most fascinating about the gambling agenda in 2024 and how it's going to be shaped in the coming years. Yeah, I think next year is already shaping up to be really fascinating in terms of two things in Europe, in the gambling industry. One is continuing developments and regulation, particularly if you think...

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countries like France and Italy, as you've already touched on, but also just that commercial landscape and the way that's changing, which brings me on to the next point really. Victor, who's your company to watch in 2025? There's been a lot of activity M&A-wise this year, and also some companies have been extremely successful in taking market share. Who's going to do that in 2025, do you think?

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really piqued my interest this year with its acquisition, its FTJ. I think this was their day acquiring Kindred, I think was one of the biggest, if not the biggest deal this year. So it's interesting for me at least to see how they continue with this acquisition, how they manage the assets that Kindred is leaving them with.

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smaller fallout on the side of that where Kindred are only going to be definitely in markets where they have a license now. So that's leaving a bit of space for one or two other companies to take some market share there as well. What about you, Ted? Who are you looking forward to seeing next year? I think Victor took my pig. I think Victor took everyone's pig. It is interesting. So yeah, I mean, look, they did the biggest deal this year, right?

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But the other thing is that the M&A is coming back to Europe. So not only FDJ, but that was kind of followed up by Flutter acquiring Snytech in Italy again. But my company to watch then, Fictus chosen FDJ. I still think that all I should be on Entain. Again, this always goes, we've spoken about this so many times that Entain has a portfolio of 30 plus brands and you have a new leadership team.

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undertaking a reorganization. And I just think that at one point, they will look at that and say, look, we're carrying too much, there's too much fat on the bone, stuff needs to be stripped out. And again, it's also going back to, I think another narrative that we're seeing, you know, across all markets, not just Europe, is that your investor base now places a much higher focus on kind of cost control and efficiency.

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of each brand. And I just think that viewing Entain, they're going to make that kind of that shock call next year of like, what are we keeping? What goes out the market? And I think kind of like, there are kind of vultures out there looking at maybe we get an Eastern European brand here, we pick up a brand in Germany. It's all to play for them. Yeah.

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Yeah, I think... Is it too late to change my answer, Martin? Yeah, yeah. Are you going to go for Ente in as well? Yes. Okay. Mine would be for next year, and you touched on it already, Ted, but I think the rise and rise of Flutter and how well run that's been. Publicly as well, it looks like really quite smooth growth. Might not be behind the scenes, we don't know. I'm really looking forward to seeing what their next movie is next year as they...

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continue the valuation of that company has grown hugely the last few years. And really interesting to see how they can continue to take that on, I think. Yeah. I mean, that's been another story here about kind of the makeup of the global gaming PLCs and how they got a firm with not only kind of US exposure, but European exposure too. And one that is actually looking at European markets and seeing kind of what are soft targets and where to grow. It's going to be...

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very hard to kind of knock them off that perch. And they have, they've got a lot of capital to come to market, man. So good luck out there guys. Yeah. I mean, that helps. Okay. Let's, I'm going to bring this to an end with two sort of quickfire questions. The first of which is, is the European gambling industry in a better place than it was at the start of 2024? I mean, what do you think Victor?

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I think, yeah, it's a better place than it has been ever. There is, you guys talked about competitiveness in the UK, but we see this on a much wider scale all across Europe. And it's, I think, it's healthy competitiveness. Just as a side note here, we saw the...

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should I say abolishment of yet another monopolistic morio with Finland this year. So the markets are opening widely and at the same time, there is also a huge focus on regulations. So I think Europe has found a good balance between fostering competitiveness and promoting safer gambling practices. Yeah. Yeah. What about you, Tadej? Are you largely in agreement with that or?

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Yeah, look, I mean, I share some of the views that Victor has on, you know, Europe needing to get it to a better place. And it has, but I think kind of like, this is, it's getting, we're now kind of getting to kind of the midway point, a very kind of conflicted decade for, for Europe in terms of kind of its economic outlook, its regulatory outlook across all sectors. And I think gambling of course is implicated in that. It's

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The other thing here is that with these resolutions, fine, okay, we're getting to a new resolution. But there are kind of challenges coming ahead for the European sector in terms of, I think, you've got a changing dynamic in customers. Also, I think that there should be kind of a good view on what happens in the crypto space and European gandons exposure to these kind of crypto dynamics. And I think that's going to come into play from 2025. So that's...

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my outlook for next year. And that's what I'd be advising people to, to, you know, have fixed eyes on. For me, I'd just say, look, we all know the playbook by now. Change is good, right? But the chaos always continues. So I'd say to everyone, like I told Joe the other day, we were going to need a bigger boat.

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We talk here about regulation and changes to regulation. You think, oh, well, maybe we'll get some kind of settlement and so on. Yeah. But the reality is technology, the pace of change in technology, and particularly the technology that is available to consumers is almost outpacing the way governments can regulate any sector now. So we're probably going to see more and more regulatory questions asked as over the next few years, whether or not there's the

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willingness within government and within regulators to address some of these questions as they come up. And we don't know what they are yet because we don't know what that technology is going to look like. That's going to keep us in a job reporting on this stuff anyway. So there's going to be a lot to talk about. So Victor, final word to you. Do you have any predictions for 2025? Victor Pacheco I can't say anything specific. You know, the industry is moving at a very wild pace every day.

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industry leaders will go back to the drawing board straight after, you know, they've put the plates in for washing from the New Year's dinner. So I can't pinpoint anything specific really. All I can say is that, for sure, is that Brazil will be the talk of the town, at least for the first few months going into 2025. Yeah, I think you're right about that, definitely.

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rise of crypto, your big prediction? Look, I think there'll be a lot of crypto anxieties next year with regards to the industry's exposure to the black market. Fine, but those have been developing in 2023 and 2024. I'm going to go big. I'm going to say that I think that there's going to be a big PLC exposed to global market maneuvers. And I think that one of these PLCs will get butchered up next year.

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Not saying that they'll go out of business, but I'm just saying that they will hit the rocks. Yeah, yeah, I'm with you on that. I can see that happening. The circumstances aren't far away from that being able to happen already. Can I just tell the audience that at the start of this year, Joe Streeter asked me for my football predictions and I'd say that Ten Hag and the new Look Man United would challenge.

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for the title and that went down the toilet. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Well, I'm going to finish with my prediction for 2025 and that is that several newspapers will be outraged when they discover whatever Denny's Coats was paid this year. I'm pretty much nailed on to win that one, I think. But guys.

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Thanks for joining me. As ever, it's been a real pleasure working on iGaming Daily. I say working, it's not this is the most fun bit of the job we do. But yeah, thank you for joining me again. We will be back for more of this, more talk about the uncertainty of the global gambling industry in 2025. Thank you.