CC: We’re not doing too good. I’ll explain why. In the legislation, we have to take care of advertising in the sense that rules have to be developed and guidelines developed that hasn’t been done. We are worried now. And we are considering doing something. It’s partly because of COVID. During COVID time all of us were sitting at home as regulators and actually seeing all these adverts popping up and on the increase. And I think that’s what alerted us to the fact that we were not doing enough. What we stipulated in the legislation is adverts should always indicate the Responsible Gambling hotline number that a person can call if they are experiencing problems and also which provincial jurisdiction has licensed you. But we haven’t gone as far as, for example, Netherlands with more strict rules in place. So that’s an area that for us as the National Gambling Board and the provinces, we definitely and urgently need to work on. The other reason why we’ve also told ourselves, it’s urgent, because before COVID, we had our casino industry that accounted for 60% of the market. And then that switched overnight. Post COVID, the betting industry accounts for 50% of the market, and they are online. So that has also threatened our enforcement strategies. Even just the regulatory model, you know, how we should regulate how we should do compliance, how we should enforce and through advertising, seeing how licensees are over advertising definitely concerns us. And then there’s also the illegal gambling operators who advertise at times and even put the regulator’s logo. We do go to the law, the South African internet service providers because they have associations where, you know, the website owners belong to, we also have the South African registry but some of them are not South African. So that’s also a challenge from an advertising perspective, bringing down those websites that we don’t have control over as South Africa. But if it’s a South African website, then we can trace them to the website Registry, or the internet service provider and have a discussion. They even have a process where you can apply for a takedown notice, to take down the website. So there are various aspects in advertising that are giving us a problem. One way in which we try and counteract the effects of advertising is as the regulator we are also on TV. So we doing TV, radio messages raising awareness of Responsible Gambling, raising awareness on the negative effects of gambling and also raising awareness on what is legal and illegal. We have a presence on TV, we have presence on radio, at times we’ve done billboards, we are in print media, we publish on our website, we are also on social media. So trying to advertise the responsible, or Responsible Gambling or way of doing it and just educating the public on the negative effects. MD: So in my jurisdiction in Florida, we have the lottery that’s one the biggest gambling advertiser without question and one of the biggest advertisers in our state. But they do not talk at all about the importance of wagering in the legal regulated environment. Have you gotten any pushback from any members of government saying, you shouldn’t be advertising what the legal market is, let the legal market do it, or is it well received by the policymakers? I’m curious what the reaction was when you started advertising, here are the legal operators, please play over there. But play responsibly. CC: We haven’t gotten any pushback, because it’s actually expected, if anything. When we’ve been to Parliament, we’ve even been instructed to go even further into the less developed areas. Because the concern is who’s reaching out to individuals, even that far. They’ve also questioned our modes of advertising, because they’ve indicated you know, in the less developed areas, there’s no access to internet. So we actually have discussions even on our modes of advertising. If you’re on social media, TV, radio, at least radio does reach certain areas, but TV, social media, billboards, you know, we’ve been more in the urban area. So actually, that is welcome. Because for them it’s about you know, people being educated. So they learn how to be responsible. MD: How’s it going in the other jurisdictions? Do you guys advertise, here’s where to wager legally and play responsibly. What do you do in your jurisdictions, RJ: We have been very, very reluctant. We didn’t want to have campaigns, attention to the possibility of gambling. That was also the advice of scientific advisors around us. If you bring it into the public eye, you’re spreading the word, so
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