Great Britain’s Gambling Commission, the GBGC, has published a set of changes to licensing conditions to take effect from 4th April of this year. The document in question is the License Conditions & Codes of Practice, which has been published in full on their website. All licensed operators have, as a standard measure, been informed of the changes.
These changes result from a long period of consultation and consideration and apply to two separate areas: the first to regulatory data, provided to the GBGC, which applies to all operators, and the second which applies only to society lotteries and external lottery managers. We’ll overlook the lottery stipulations for the moment.
In their published guidance, the GBGC set out adjustments to license conditions, as well as new social responsibility code provisions which are required of all operators. They also provide some non-required but subtly encouraged actions described as “good practice”.
Henceforth, license holders will be required to report any circumstance where a relationship with a customer has been discontinued, along with key information on suspicious activity reports. This is presumably to assist the Commission in shoring up its ability to track relationships with potentially fraudulent or criminal activity, as well as problem gamblers of all types.
Furthermore, from now on all operators must report as key events situations in which game faults lead to overpayment or underpayment of a customer.
Operators must now also report as key events any revenues derived from other jurisdictions when there is “a sustained or meaningful generation of the 3%-10% threshold being exceeded by the group”. This is in relation to concerns the GBGC has had over some operators being less than keen to produce group data. The concern surrounds the operations of group companies trading in so-called grey markets, as well as the legality of funding sources, and is another example of the GBGC tightening its reins over the industry as a whole this year.
The 3% cap referred to the percentage of total revenues gained from any specific jurisdiction and relates to groups of companies where total revenue is over £5 million per annum, with the 10% cap applying to companies below this limit. This is another example, as we are seeing across Europe, of a domestic authority attempting to come to grips optimally with a growing international marketplace.
