Bullet Business

As Alderney Gambling's head of e-commerce development, Robin Le Prevost says the past two years have been quite fascinating and challenging as any period in this sector.

"We have witnessed enormous swings in sentiments and if one looks back - these last two years has covered the US moves to ban the sector which surprised everyone, the UK opening up its regime and we now see Europe at the beginning of what promises to be a very interesting journey and of course, the relentless pursuit for new markets gathers more momentum," says Le Prevost, who is scheduled to speak during 5th Annual Mobile Gambling Summit Europe, to be on 18-19 November in London.

Le Prevost, whose focus has been on ensuring that Alderney's position is clearly understood and that the entity's values are relevant to all sectors of the business, said, "As always our main issue has been dealing with people's perception of our jurisdiction. Alderney has a great reputation for strong regulation but we must never lose site that it equally remains the most business friendly jurisdiction too. We are not just after the largest operators but we have had more than our fair share of start-ups, too, and we want that to continue that across the whole spectrum of gaming."

Le Prevost also spoke about operating successfully across multiple jurisdictions, especially from mobile service providers' perspective, and some of the other issues in an interview with bulletbusiness.com's Ritesh Gupta. Excerpts:

bulletbusiness.com: What according to you is critical for any stakeholder especially mobile service providers to operate successfully across multiple jurisdictions?

Robin Le Prevost: If we just look at Europe, we can get a feel for how challenging this really is. For the operator, he has to know position of the market he is targeting and the consequences of entering that market. For now, there is considerable uncertainty across Europe, which creates opportunity but we must be careful for what we wish for because as clarity comes along then the available market will shrink… Italy has opened up for licencing but that creates certainty where there was none before, the operator who perhaps offered service there previously now knows that he could apply for a licence and if he doesn't then there may be consequences.

It seems likely that other countries will develop licencing frameworks along the similar lines and as they do one's ability to play fast and loose will doubtless diminish.

bulletbusiness.com: Considering that the likes of Italy and France have recently moved to open the gambling sector to private competition, following the lead of Britain, do you think the face of mobile gambling is bound to evolve in the time to come? What according to you are still the major hurdles for mobile gambling to grow from gambling regulation and licencing perspective?

Robin Le Prevost: Without doubt, the future will lead to greater accessibility for all manner of new technologies, when is a question I won't even touch on, but I think we all know you can't "un-invent" things. Mobile will find its place within the overall regulatory structures which will evolve, but it will take time as the regulators struggle to get to grips with the technology and the ramifications of allowing a technology which crosses borders so easily. There are so many vested interests other than just fairness, problem gambling and Anti-Money Laundering etc. There will also be tax implications and make no mistake, this is a big question to be solved.  

bulletbusiness.com: An expert pointed out to some of the regulatory issues related to mobile gambling in Europe, which raise several questions. For instance, it is clearly not allowed to promote Mobile Gaming in Germany, however, what happens when German user gets UK SIM card? What's your viewpoint regarding such issues?

Robin Le Prevost: Taking that particular example who has broken what law here? Is it the UK Telecom in selling a German citizen a sim card, clearly not, or is it the German citizen in procuring a sim card for the express purpose of gambling online? This would clearly be an issue between the German citizen and his Government. But one can see that other measures could be used here if the Government was serious about clamping down on such activities, bank transfers from the German citizen to gambling sites could be blocked, IP address blocking could be utilised, there are technical limits but they can make it very difficult if they want.

bulletbusiness.com: What factors should companies take into consideration in order to abide by the laws or operate as per legal boundaries for any market in this region?

Robin Le Prevost: One only has to look at what happened in the US when UIGEA was introduced when many of the highest profile companies immediately withdrew; their thoughts were in keeping themselves in the best shape politically for when the climate changed. Most people know how to circumvent measures such as UIGEA but that is missing the point entirely. If you are in it for the medium to long term and you want to be able to get back into that (US) market - defying the US authorities has to be fairly low on your list of priorities. The same goes for the EU and beyond. There are always consequences for your actions and you can see the immense effort people are putting in right now to expunge there records, a stain like this is costly.

bulletbusiness.com: Built-in cell phone technology has done away with problems that gambling websites face in determining if a user is in a country where betting online is legal. But what happens if the mobile phone is taken into a country, where there can be legal issues related to mobile gambling? What kind of implications do you think this can have on various stakeholders be it manufacturer or service providers?

Robin Le Prevost: I should perhaps point out that a fairly usual stance has been to say that where the transactional servers are is where the betting / gambling takes place and so where the mobile phone / device is has been seen as not being terribly relevant in many places. This position though is being threatened by some and for instance the US has never agreed with this stance in terms of e-commerce. Whilst the chances of this activity being detected would be small to non-existent, it would seem sensible for the operator to warn his customer that he might be contravening the laws of the country he is currently visiting.

bulletbusiness.com: If on one hand, there are positive projections about growth of mobile gambling in Europe, on the other, it is said that there are legal ambiguities that need to be resolved along with some other issues such as payments. What's your viewpoint about mobile gambling progressing in future in the context of current regulatory environment and legislation in the region?

Robin Le Prevost: Mobile gambling will make progress but it presents particular problems about jurisdiction which are not as easily solved and in that context, I expect it to lag behind the contemporary online industry growth trend.

Payments is an interesting area and I expect there to be some forward thinking here but most if not all the movement has to come from the telecoms companies, if they want to get involved their costing /billing model has to change if it is to provide any kind of value as we understand it, if not, it will be web-based solutions as the way forward.


5th Annual Mobile Gambling Summit Europe

Robin Le Prevost, Head of Ecommerce Development, Alderney Gambling is scheduled to speak during 5th Annual Mobile Gambling Summit Europe will be on 18-19 November, in London.

For information click here: http://www.bulletbusiness.com/mobilegambling08/agenda.shtml

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Contact Ben Satchwell at +44 (0)207 375 7163 or email ben@bulletbusiness.com