really quite bizarre. SP: With these words, let’s move to our final part of the fireside chat, which is around sound market conditions and the challenges ahead for the industry and regulators. Can you identify a few conditions for us that you find particularly important for the success of a regulated market? And maybe you can help us by also trying to define what success means. JL: For me it’s a stable, understandable, regulated playing field where everyone knows the rules and everyone has fair access. That for me is number one. When you have a situation where there is a mixture of monopoly, and my government still has a monopoly on a public lottery system, which is very antiquated and completely unfair, and they’ve written a little line in the laws saying that our lottery is not gambling. Governments can do that. It’s crazy but they can. But you need stability, you need access to your regulator, you need to be able to tell us what is coming up. But you also need to look, I think, within your own systems in your own companies, and make sure you’re not working in silos. One of the recurring problems is, and I do find this really quite strange, speaking to an audience where you’re all higher level executives in your organizations you know what should be happening. But unfortunately, the day-to-day tasks given to you and your teams that send us the data is not at your level, it’s much lower. And I’m not sure the oversight of these people is always what it should be. And we consistently get data or don’t get the right data or no data. And we have to chase and that has been true my entire career. And you know, that’s down to organization and you’ve got to make sure that your teams, especially your customer acquisition teams, speak to your compliance guys, so that they know they shouldn’t send out marketing emails to people on exclusion lists, for example, which still happens. It’s so fundamentally simple and yet it happens again and again. SP: Emmanuel, in your view, what is absolutely crucial in regard to sound market conditions? What can you tell us from your experience of three decades? EM: I think we need to address the discussion on gambling addiction, for sure. We have data, we need to find out how to organize that. So definitely, the legal sector has an obligation to detect, to choose to do that and we have to care, not cure. Doctors need to give us a definition of addiction, because the dependence on the players’ emotions and feelings related to gambling are not the same from one person to another. After the legal sector can do that, we need people to understand that the legal sector is the ally not the enemy. And we need strong regulators with strong means and they need to be independent. They need to have financial means. So they can lead survey studies and be bridges between universities and other stakeholders. And it’s the only way that we can get to the fun, to the economy, to the employment and so on. But we need to address that in the next five years, for sure. SP: On a final note, could you comment on the biggest challenge or challenges that you see ahead. JL: For me, it’s maybe slightly different for you guys, because the gambling industry is very small. We have a huge financial services sector in Jersey. For me, it’s making sure that the industry isn’t screwed over. Actually, we’ve got Moneyval visiting us in 10-days time. For anyone who doesn’t know what Moneyval is, it’s the European part of the Financial Action Task Force that comes and assesses all our anti money laundering compliance. That, from a governmental sector, is the number one challenge. But it’s going to be different on a jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction basis. So, keeping up with technology, as Emmanuel says, trying to make sure that the regulator has access to the resources that it needs. And I think keeping a relationship with you guys and your clients, because an industry that doesn’t have a good communication won’t work. We don’t expect to be friends, but whoever doesn’t have good communication and access to the regulator is going to be an industry in crisis. EM: For me the challenge is to persuade decision makers that we are part of the solution. We have solutions to bring, and we must be at the discussion table. Not that we are right about everything. We are doing business, so we have to follow the rules. But definitely, we are part of the solution, if we want to make money in our economies. SP: Thank you. Hence, it all comes down to communication. Please join me in thanking our wonderful fireside guests. Thank you very much.
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