Tag Archives: DAVID CLIFTON

London will be subjected to a sports betting industry invasion on Thursday 15th and Friday 16th September, as sports betting operators from around the globe arrive to network and discuss the latest trends and developments. Betting on Sports 2016 has attracted sportsbook operators from the UK, Central and Eastern Europe, US, Canada, Africa, Asia, and even Australia. Organised by SBC …

Two developments have occurred over the last month that have provided some considerable insight into the Gambling Commission’s present and future regulatory priorities. The first is publication of the Commission’s Annual Report for 2015/16. The second is a speech entitled “Gambling: Getting the balance right” given by Philip Graf at the Royal Society of Arts as he comes to the …

An article has already been published by SBC News about the latest gambling industry statistics, recently published by the Gambling Commission and covering the period April 2011 to March 2015 (but updated to include October 2014 to September 2015); (see http://www.sbcnews.co.uk/retail/2016/07/04/gambling-commission-reveals) However, I am going to drill down a bit deeper into those figures with a particular focus on the …

I moderated a European Update panel session at the annual conference of the International Association of Gaming Advisors, which took place earlier this month in Malta. Predictably, one topic that produced heated debate was the lack of harmonization, or even hope of harmonization, of gambling laws and licensing processes across the EU Member States but this led on to the …

The last month has seen a large number of regulatory developments that will have direct bearing on operators licensed by the Gambling Commission. Although it was not the first in chronological terms, my starting point is a speech given by Sarah Harrison, the Gambling Commission Chief Executive, at the Bingo Association AGM. It represented a summary of: what she called …

With ever increasing compliance responsibilities pursuant to the Gambling Commission’s LCCP and more soon to arise on implementation of the 4th Money Laundering Directive, betting operators might be forgiven for thinking that there was a limit to the extent to which even more onerous regulatory burdens could be heaped upon them in the near future. However, even greater focus on …

When I first started advising the UK betting industry in the 1980s, it lived in a very different regulatory world than it lives in today. It was a land-based industry. Remote betting took place only by phone. The Gaming Board for Great Britain (the predecessor to the Gambling Commission) had no jurisdiction as far as the betting industry was concerned. The …

Most start-up businesses share a common expectation of commercial success. Whilst wholly admirable in terms of optimism, a danger nevertheless exists that this can on occasions border on misplaced over-confidence in what they perceive to be the inevitable consequence of their earnest endeavours, without there necessarily having been adequate advance focus on their advertising and marketing strategies. In the gambling …

As all operators licensed by the Gambling Commission reading this will surely be aware, they are required to uphold the licensing objectives under the Gambling Act 2005 and to have in place effective policies and procedures to identify and manage the risks to those objectives arising from their business. In order to uphold the first licensing objective to prevent gambling …

Gambling operators licensed by the Gambling Commission are required by LCCP social responsibility code provision 6.1.1 (which has the force of a licence condition) to: put in effect a written procedure for handling customer complaints and disputes and offer dispute resolution by an ADR provider. This is to ensure that customers with a dispute about the outcome of their gambling …