iGaming Daily

Anaya McDonald (00:01.594)
Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the iGaming Daily Podcast. I'm Victor Cayet, Senior Journalist for SPC News. And today I'm joined by Danny Lee, one of the men behind the latest SPC product iGaming Expert. And Ted Menmure, our SPC Content Director. It's an honor to have you both here, gents. Ted, how are you feeling?

Ted (00:28.812)
Very well, very well man. Good to join you guys. Happy Manchester.

Anaya McDonald (00:32.209)
Yeah, thank you, thank you for taking the time out of London. And Danny is in the room with me. Danny, how are you feeling? Yeah, I'm good. Glad to be back on the podcast. It's been a short while, so I'm ready to dig into some of the breaking news of this week. And there is quite a lot to dive in. Recently, we're going to start with you, Danny, as this is a topic that you've covered.

on iGaming Expert. It's quite a new story. There are a lot of details around it and we're going to be happy to hear all about it. And what I'm talking about? I'm talking about the Entain lawsuit that was recently launched by two individuals against the company. Can you tell us who these individuals are? First of all, let's start from the basics.

Okay, so it's actually the ex-CEO, Kenny Alexander, who I believe was CEO at Entain between the years of 2007 and 2020, just sort of after this case, or this like Turkish bribery case that's been in the news for so many years now, sort of came into light a bit more, and he was joined in this sort of legal action that's launched this week by ex-chair, at the same time, Lee Feldman.

So they're the ones behind this? They're the ones, those are the two people behind the lawsuit and they are suing Entain from what I understand this Entain or formerly known as GVC Holdings. They are actually suing the company from the time of its previous naming. And this is when the bribery accusations happened. Can you talk us through the case itself?

Yeah so obviously when it was known as GBC Holdings I think it had operated an online gaming and sports betting business in Turkey that it did sell back in 2017 I believe it was sold to a company called Ropso Malta Limited so they acquired that company acquired Entains Turkish Business and there was an investigation into

Anaya McDonald (02:56.852)
That business not long after that. I believe it launched off maybe 2020 because it was found that almost two years after and in our GBC holdings had Sold that business that they were still benefiting benefiting from the business in in some way or profiting from it Accusations. Yeah, exactly Accused of them accused of benefiting from that business still

So I believe it was His Majesty's Royal... HMRC. HMRC. I don't need to say it fully, do I? It was HMRC that launched the investigation into Entain over potential corporate offending and breaches of, I believe it was Section 7 of the Bribery Act 2010. So just to summarise a little bit, in 20...

In 2023 the HMRC find Intain with 600 million pounds because they found In a previous investigation. They found that the company while still operating in Turkey, which as we know is a very strict market Online licensed gambling companies are far and few in between Intain was

accused of profiting from a company in the... Can we start over? Not start over, but cut this part. Okay, just to summarize the case, I'm gonna pick up from there.

Ted (04:30.867)
Let's...

Anaya McDonald (04:38.998)
Okay, just to summarize, Intane was fined by HMRC in 2023 over bribery investigation in Turkey when it was previously active under the name of JVC Holdings. And what are Mr. Alexander, Kenny Alexander and Lee Feldman, the...

claimants in this case after. So Alexander and Feldman, they're sort claiming that there was information handed from Entain and the law firm that were defending Entain at the time, known as Adelshaw Goddard, so they're claiming that they had shared information with the investigators at the time without their consent. Obviously the CEO of GBC Holdings at the time and the chair Lee Feldman at the time.

They're claiming that they weren't aware of documents or evidence or whatever it is that they're referring to had been shared with the investigators. And it seems that through this legal action that they've launched this week, it's looking like they're trying to find out what exact information was delivered to the investigators and maybe take action from there once finding out what exact information had been handed over.

What do you think if, although let's just say now that Entain has responded to this lawsuit, can you tell us what they replied? Yeah, so Entain's response was very straightforward to be honest. They just said that these claims were without merit and that the company will contest it robustly. So it's looking like they're obviously putting up a

position of defense against that and meanwhile the law firm that were involved Adelshaw, Goddard, they said that they were unable to comment due to client confidentiality obligations that they're subjected to but it's been it's been a bit of a rejection from Intain put it that way. And it's interesting times for Intain because their CEO stepped down recently just mere days ago. You think it's in a strong

Anaya McDonald (07:03.405)
position to defend itself given that departure I'm talking about Gavin Isaacs Yeah, I'm sure it's obviously not the best time for them to receive like this sort of legal action or have to defend itself against it But I'm sure they'll have the proper procedures in place to deal with it without Isaacs or not I mean it's obviously a very tumultuous time for the company at the minute considering that he's

Isaacs has stepped down less than six months after assuming the role as CEO, so there's a lot going on at the company at the minute and having this Turkish bribery case that they've been embroiled in for well over half a decade now rise up again is certainly not going to be ideal for the operator at the minute. Yeah, nice insight Danny. Thank you for the story, thank you for covering it, thank you for diving into the details for us.

We're going to leave you for a bit to go into a commercial break in the second part of the podcast. Expect me and Ted to go into another geographical region. I'm talking about the Netherlands and what has the country been up to as of recently. See you soon.

Anaya McDonald (08:22.947)
Ted, you ready to go?

Ted (08:26.756)
after you.

Anaya McDonald (08:28.378)
I am ready to go. Let's Okay. So.

Ted (08:30.483)
I mean, yeah, okay.

Ted (08:39.186)
Just Rift.

Anaya McDonald (08:41.285)
Welcome back to the podcast. Now we're going to head into the Netherlands and we're going to talk about the latest developments with the KOA Act. Me and Ted, we've covered that market quite a lot in recent times. So it's a very dynamic market. It's developing every day.

But there have been some developments, just as of recently, that we're gonna go over them. First though, Tete, can you tell the listeners what is the KOA Act?

Ted (09:26.213)
Okay, so let's start off with kind of an overview of what's happening in the Dutch market. And I think when you analyze markets such as the Netherlands or Germany, you have to be kind of reflective of their frameworks and how they process laws. The COA Act reflects the Remote Gaming Act of the Netherlands. And this is a process that took 10 years to unfold and 10 years to reach a settlement.

which it did in October 2021 in which it launched the market. Now, following a lot of compromise on that market launch, the regime was put into an instant review by the government. And this is one of regulatory up-drop that the government has been kind of ruptured in the Netherlands.

and there's been lot of divisions and fractures about how that market should take shape, how the licenses should be granted and which incumbents should be played and what segments should be supervised. So the launch of CoA

as a framework has always been ruptured. It's always been kind of fragmented, but also part of the issue here is that from its launch, it was instantly put under review and we saw kind of ministers come in, provide an instant feedback and it's been a market that's been up for 10 and half years. However, it's been just scrutinized from point to point.

Anaya McDonald (11:02.654)
And because of the scrutiny, there was a lot of calls for reforms, to reform the act itself. And there was a big portion of reforms happening last year for better protections, protecting vulnerability groups, et cetera, et cetera.

Ted (11:26.579)
you

Anaya McDonald (11:30.611)
They were led by Frank Virvent, who was the former minister and there was an election in the country. please repeat Frank's name? Sorry? Can you please repeat Frank's name? Frank Virvent. Yeah, but can you repeat that sentence again for me? Okay. Thank you.

Ted (11:37.714)
Mm-hmm.

Anaya McDonald (11:55.827)
And I'm going to just go over from the top. And because of the scrutiny, there have been a lot of calls for reforms in the KOA act. And the bigger part of last year saw these reforms come into shape. They were first led by former Minister Frank Vierwent after the country

went out of its election cycle. They were spearheaded by the new legal protections minister, Toin Stroykin. I'm sorry if I'm pronouncing his name incorrect. But Stroykin now wants to, it seems like he's against the reforms that his predecessor,

initially led. He seems like he has his own vision about how the market should look like. In your article Ted, the headline was Troy can kill the KOA reform bill. Can you tell us why did you use this specific word? Because it really comes into my attention.

Ted (13:16.851)
Okay, so thank you, L'Occitane. I think what is understood about the car framework and kind of its heightened scrutiny is that if you were to take it from where it was in 2021 to where it is now,

is that the revisions needed or the revisions that has undertaken, it's a completely different framework, even proceeding into what it's now going to be its kind of definitive overhaul. So under Frank Vervid, immediately between six months, the first six months of the year, we saw heightened scrutiny or heightened regulation on advertising, on customer care checks, and on one-on-one

protocols with individual customer spending. The other thing is that in year two, they agreed terms on deposit limits, more kind of customer care checks, they gave kind of new powers to KSA to implement kind of a tougher scrutiny of licenses.

Anaya McDonald (14:23.402)
KSA sorry to interrupt is the Dutch gambling regulator

Ted (14:26.674)
Yes, yes.

So this again, what's important to understand about the Dutch market is that it hasn't been analogue or stagnated. The kind of

influx of constitutional regulation has been constant throughout its existence. However, it appears that none of the parties have been kind of pleased in the overall framework and for a year now it's been debated whether they should just kill the CoA Act and restart again. Now, towing straight card.

who is now the Legal Protections Minister has come back and said look we will present a new online gambling bill by the end of the year. However the CoA Act will still remain and will still be kind of a placeholder until that transition is over and he expects kind of those reforms that were agreed on to be implemented. So again you're going to get a much tougher

online gambling marketplace, a much more scrutinized online gambling marketplace in the Netherlands this year.

Anaya McDonald (15:37.732)
It's unfathomable you're talking about a more scrutinized market and then because it is actually being put quite under a big scrutiny as of now. is like you said like you mentioned a lot of criticism comes from the political world a lot of criticism against the the KOA market.

ministers like Van Nispen and Becker, can you talk about a little bit about that, about the criticism from the political cycle?

Ted (16:16.798)
So again, a lot of this is kind of understanding kind of the frameworks of the Netherlands and what you're allowed to do as a politician in the Netherlands is you're allowed to present kind of modalities.

or motions to the House regarding any law. Now that doesn't mean that they're going to be implemented, but that means that they have to be reviewed and voted on and voted on to be kind of amendments of existing laws. Right. So again, it goes round to Dutch laws being constantly fluid. They can constantly be influenced. They can constantly like raised up and checked upon. And I think that this is a kind of key condition that no other gambling market has in Europe, where there's this kind of constant revision of the laws, whether it be

implemented, what are kind of the standards applied and high, high oversight with what are kind of the existing conditions of the market. It's very different to what we have in the UK or in markets such as Spain or Italy, once fixed those laws, once agreed on those laws are fixed. In Holland,

they can have a continued transfer. Thus you had this input from the CDU, from the Socialist Party to re-grab all the existing laws of co-op and reform them instantly.

Anaya McDonald (17:37.323)
Do you think this system having no equivalent across Europe, do you think this is something that other countries should take note of or do you think it's kind of more detrimental to the quality of the gambling market there?

Ted (17:55.667)
It depends. It depends. mean, I think for the new legal protection ministers, he says that he's going to be kind of cooperative across the board with the political parties. Now, again, this is going back to the K-MIL. You've got a very divided...

political spectrum in Holland and even the government itself is divided by four coalition parties which you know if you compare to the rest of Europe that would be divided between one or two. The agreement for how forms are reformed and also kind of the whole purpose of the coalition itself they've got to carry a bigger mandate now with four parties being involved so

Again, it's kind of the backdrop of how kind of gambling laws being going to be reformed against this kind of condition. I think Holland is a very kind of unique place as we see it right now.

Anaya McDonald (18:47.784)
Thank you. you for this insight, Ladies and gentlemen, this was all the time we had for today's episode. Danny Ted, again, thank you for going over the news with me. You can read all about what's going on and clicking on the links that will be in the description below this podcast. Yeah, keep following SPC's...

Media products keep keep in touch with the news and we're gonna see you in the next episode. Bye.

Anaya McDonald (19:25.106)
What should I say anything specific?

Anaya McDonald (19:32.757)
And that's all the time that we had for today. Thank you for joining us, folks. Thank you to Danny and thank you to Ted for their time as well. You can read all about the news that we've just discussed in the links provided under the podcast episodes below. yeah, keep.

the podcast sorry guys I'm gonna keep you hostages for 10 minutes more yeah let's from the top

Anaya McDonald (20:17.545)
episode description below. From the podcast episode description below. You can do it from the start though. I can't? You can. Give me some more flow. I can? Yeah. Okay.

Alright, that's all the time that we had for today. Thank you for tuning in. Thank you, Dani and Ted, for providing your expertise on the latest news from the SBC media network. What we've just discussed you can read in the links from the podcast description below. And that was me, Victor Kayed. See you in the next episode.