Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING FEB 2019 10 ICE bringing iGaming in from the cold www.asgam.com Ben Blaschke Managing Editor We crave your feedback. Please email your comments to bb@asgam.com. F or many of us working in and around the gaming industry, the start of February always means a trip to London for ICE. Since changing its name from the original Amusement Trades Exhibition to International Casino Expo in 1991 – and particularly during the seven years in which the show has been held inside the expansive ExCeL London – ICE has grown to become the world’s biggest gaming industry trade event with more than 33,500 attendees last year alone. But more than ijust its sheer size, what makes ICE stand out from other major trade shows on IAG ’s annual calendar is the large representation from the online sector. With most European nations boasting strong regulation of the iGaming sector – and many other nations rapidly catching up – it makes sense for online operators, platform providers and innovators to show off the latest the sector has to offer in London each February. One of the reasons for the growth of online gaming in Europe is the European Union, which at its core supports cross-border cooperation in business under the terms of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. As a result, although there is no specific EU law as it relates to online gaming, those nations that do legislate for certain gaming services are generally open to licensing iGaming operators from across the continent. That comes in stark contrast to the situation in Asia, where online gaming faces vastly different regulatory hurdles from country to country. In many Asian countries, most notably China but also Singapore, Japan and Vietnam among others, online gambling remains as good as banned outside of some rare exceptions (such as local lotteries) and various quasi-legal loopholes. Other jurisdictions such as the Philippines (and to a certain extent Cambodia) have initiated more concrete initiatives to properly regulate the online gaming industry, with gaming regulator PAGCOR implementing its Philippine Offshore Gaming Operator (POGO) initiative in 2016. Then there is Macau, the world’s biggest land-based casino market, which to this day has steered well clear of anything related to online gaming outside of one local sports betting operator which is licensed to offer betting on football and basketball only. I suspect this will change eventually, although perhaps not anytime soon given a government directive ahead of G2E Asia in 2017 warning against any overt presence of iGaming operators on the showroom floor. The DICJ also stated in May 2018 that it had no future plans to regulate cryptocurrency gaming. Clearly Asia still has a long way to go to catch up to Europe in this respect, so for now all eyes will keep turning to London for the industry’s annual iGaming fix. EDITORIAL