Official magazine of the International Masters of Gaming Law
®
MALTA MARKET FOCUS
INTERNATIONAL MASTERS of GAMING LAW MAGAZINE
VOLUME 6 | NO. 1 | MARCH 2026
TACKLING THE BLACK MARKET IN EUROPE AND THE US
PLUS
1-ON-1 WITH UKGC'S TIM MILLER EUROPEAN REGULATORY HARMONIZATION COMING SOON? ALBERTA GOES LIVE WITH SPORTS BETTING ESTONIA'S IGAMING AMBITIONS GAME CHANGING WORLD CUP IN NORTH AMERICA ...AND MUCH MORE!
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IMGL MAGAZINE | JANUARY 2023
MALTA’S FATF GREY-LISTING IMGL OFFICERS 2026
Officers of IMGL for 2025
PHIL SICUSO Assistant Treasurer BOSE MCKINNEY & EVANS, LLP INDIANAPOLIS +1 317 684 5265 PSICUSO@BOSELAW.COM
PETER KULICK 1 st Vice President DICKINSON WRIGHT PLLC LANSING, MICHIGAN +1 517 487 4729 PKULICK@DICKINSONWRIGHT.COM MARC DUNBAR President JONES WALKER TALLAHASSEE, FLORIDA +1 850 214 5080 MDUNBAR@JONESWALKER.COM COSMINA SIMION Executive Vice President WHSIMION & PARTNERS BUCHAREST, ROMANIA +40 31 420 6225 COSMINA.SIMION@ WHSIMIONPARTNERS.RO
RON SEGEV Secretary SEGEV LLP TORONTO / VANCOUVER +1 604 629 5402 RON@SEGEVLLP.COM
DR. SIMON PLANZER Assistant Secretary PLANZER LAW AG ZUG, SWITZERLAND +41 41 512 42 82 PLANZER@PLANZER-LAW.COM
ERNEST C. MATTHEWS IV Vice President, Affiliate Members INTERNET SPORTS INTERNATIONAL LAS VEGAS, NEVADA +1 954 478 8758 ERNEST@ISISPORTS.COM BIRGITTE SAND Vice President, Affiliate-Regulator Members BIRGITTE SAND AND ASSOCIATES COPENHAGEN, DENMARK +45 24 44 05 03 BS@BIRGITTESAND.COM BECKY HARRIS Vice President, Educator Members WILLIAM S. BOYD SCHOOL OF LAW AT UNLV LAS VEGAS, NEVADA +1 702-324-0404 BECKY@BECKYHARRISNV.COM
MATTHIAS SPITZ 2 nd Vice President MELCHERS LAW HEIDELBERG +49 62 2118 50141 M.SPITZ@MELCHERS-LAW.COM
KATE LOWENHAR-FISHER Treasurer EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, CHIEF LEGAL OFFICER, EVERI HOLDINGS INC +1 800 566-2087 KATE.LOWENHARFISHER@EVERI.COM
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IMGL MAGAZINE | MARCH 2026
PRESIDENT’S WELCOME
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Working to build the value of the IMGL
MARC DUNBAR President INTERNATIONAL MASTERS OF GAMING LAW
A t the time of writing, we are just a few days off our spring conference in Washington D.C. and I, for one, am excited. At a time when our industry in the U.S. is as political and litigious as it has ever been, it feels like a great opportunity to be at the heart of the action. Our final speaker roster is just now being confirmed but we already have an exciting lineup of regulators, operators, and expert advisors. That is not to say this is a U.S.-centric event. Far from it. With speakers and panellists coming in from Canada, Latin America and Europe there will be a plethora of international perspectives on offer. Combine the program with some classic IMGL hospitality (including a gala dinner at the incomparable Hay-Adams) and we have a spring conference that will exceed your expectations of education, networking and entertainment. I hope to see you there. Elsewhere across the organization, I’m pleased to announce two new initiatives: our ambassador program and our mentoring program. The ambassador program will see members supported to actively share the benefits of IMGL membership at industry events in their regions. We have already created a subgroup to explore opportunities in Asia and Australasia and I’m hoping to add further regions to the list soon. Support will be practical as well as financial and I’m sure that as a result we will see the name and reputation of IMGL spread even further around the world of gaming. You can discover more about this initiative at our member meeting in D.C. in April.
The mentorship program reinstates a habit that dates back to the early days of IMGL where longer-standing members took new ones under their wings. They saw to it that new members were connected to those with relevant interests and networks, that they were introduced to our various committees and explored opportunities to serve on panels and write for our magazine. The intention with this initiative is that we create a more bonded organization which practises the kind of family values that we hold dear. 2026 has also seen the start of a project looking at our website and social media activities to increase our visibility and act as a more powerful platform for members. In an era of AI and non- click search, it feels particularly important that we work hard to introduce IMGL to an ever- changing industry through our digital channels. You will soon see some visual tweaks to our website and some new activities appearing on our Linkedin output. Behind the scenes we are working with a third-party agency to look at the structure of our site and work on the presentation of our excellent content to better serve our search goals and bring more traffic to areas like our member directory. These projects are designed to build the IMGL, grow our reach and bolster the value of membership. I hope I can count on your support as we roll them out.
Marc Dunbar
IMGL MAGAZINE | MARCH 2026
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EDITORIAL
Ways to tackle the black market and the values of research
T he patchwork quilt of European regulation is an industry bugbear blamed for high compliance costs and for boosting the black market. Harmonization may be on the horizon, but not in the way you expect. Our opening article makes a strong argument for bottom-up harmonization as the only practical answer. In the 1-on-1 interview featured in our last issue with the Chairman of the KSA, we noted that a successfully licensed gambling market has to address at least two dimensions. It must provide attractive gambling products to consumers as well as frustrate the activities of black market operators. These are the push and pull factors that lead people to gamble offshore and the offense and defense of effective regulation. Some argue they don’t want gambling in their jurisdiction, yet, this is an illusion. The accurate view is, as the UKGC’s Tim Miller argues in our interview in this issue, that they already have it. The questions are only, is it regulated, are consumers protected and do you get the tax revenues? As we learn in this edition, Alberta is the latest
Canadian province to take the sound and pragmatic approach of legalizing and licensing gambling. Other jurisdictions, notably California and Texas, have not yet gone down this road, which may have well contributed to the rapid expansion of prediction markets. While this novel form of betting/trading has gained traction throughout the US, these two states seem to account for a lion’s share, at least for now. The situation of some US states permitting sports betting while others are much more restrictive will be tested this year with the arrival in North America of the FIFA World Cup. This is not just the biggest sporting event on the planet, it is also likely to be the biggest sports betting event ever. And accordingly, another article in this issue does a comprehensive job charting which sets of traveling fans will be able to bet legally on their teams, and which will not, depending on the cities where their games will be played. Many of those traveling to the World Cup will be unfamiliar with prediction markets. In the absence of a licensed alternative, they may well return home with new betting/ trading habits.
SIMON PLANZER PHD Editor in Chief IMGL MAGAZINE
Contents 6
The future of online gambling regulation in the EU: From fragmentation to functional governance 14 Winning by working together: one-on-one interview with UKGC's Tim Miller 20 Fighting the black market – the infinite game 26 Avoiding a flop: a dive into FIFA World Cup 2026 wagering 34 The evolution of Estonia's iGaming framework 40 Alberta’s emerging iGaming framework 46 Lootboxes, betting on e-sports & player claims before the ECJ & Austrian courts 52 Protecting the legal gaming ecosystem – one illegal market at a time 56 Spring 2026 Conference: level up your legal game in the nation’s capital
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IMGL MAGAZINE | JUNE 2025 IMGL MAGAZINE | MARCH 2026
EDITORIAL
This does not necessarily mean that prediction markets will spread around the world. Another piece looking at the possibility of these products popping up in Europe highlights high regulatory and cultural hurdles. It also argues that existing players in diverse and competitive regulated markets will simply adopt some of the dynamics that make prediction markets appealing. Views on the black market take up quite a lot of space in this issue with the UKGC’s Tim Miller and the AGA’s Bill Miller both arguing that efforts to undermine unlicensed gambling form a crucial plank of effective regulation. The article on the Infinite Game presents a long view of this struggle and one that, of course, addresses push and pull factors. I want to highlight another aspect of our interview with Tim Miller and one that is close to my heart: research. I raised the question with him, in his role as (among other things) head of research at the UKGC, whether there was something intrinsically questionable or suspect about research into gambling being funded by the industry. He dismissed this view and pointed to potential biases on all sides. He added that not including input of the industry into research would be "a nonsense" . I could not agree more. Rather than being obsessed with the question of source of funding, stakeholders should carefully monitor whether well-established scientific quality criteria, including the study’s methodology, have been respected in a publication. Yours sincerely, Simon planzer@planzer-law.com
To access our extensive archive of expert gaming law articles visit www.IMGL.org/publications
IMGL Magazine is owned, published and distributed by: The International Masters of Gaming Law PO Box 27106, Las Vegas, NV 89126 USA The IMGL is a domestic non-profit corporation registered in Nevada, U.S. with registration number NV20121147120 Editor in Chief: Simon Planzer PhD, planzer@planzer-law.com Publication & Marketing Committee: Co-chairs , Simon Planzer (Publications), Ali Bartlett (Social Networks & Digital) Members : Luiz Felipe Maia, Daniel McGinn, Luis Carvalho Staff : Phil Savage, Brien Van Dyke Head of Publications: Phil Savage phil@IMGL.org Design and production: SportBusiness Communications. Copyright: All rights reserved to IMGL. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without prior permission from the publisher. The articles expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect the views of IMGL but those of the authors. The publisher and editor do not accept any liability for the contents of the authors’ contributions.
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IMGL MAGAZINE | JUNE 2025 IMGL MAGAZINE | MARCH 2026
The future of online gambling regulation in the EU: From fragmentation to functional governance EFFECTIVE HARMONIZATION IN EUROPEAN GAMBLING REGULATION MAY BE CLOSER THAN IT SEEMS ARGUE WULF HAMBACH , STEFANIE FUCHS-RAICHER , AND CHRISTINA KIRICHENKO
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EU REGULATION
E urope's patchwork of regulation has long been a bugbear of licensed operators. They point to the unjustified cost and friction of doing business across 27 member states who each insist on creating their own legal environment. Harmonization seems like a political and practical impossibility, but is that actually the case? Experience across diverse sectors shows that top-down legal harmonization in the European Union (“EU”) is often necessary, but it is neither sufficient for, nor the sole driver of, meaningful convergence. This article explores the possibility of a viable path towards harmonization for the EU’s online gambling industry which may lie in incremental, bottom-up functional convergence. By examining successes and failures of EU harmonization efforts in other regulated industries, the authors argue for a gambling law harmonization model based on mutual collaboration, technical standards, third-party conformity assessments, and market-facing clarity. Introduction The European experience across regulated industries shows that regulatory harmonization rarely succeeds through top-down political acts alone. Although single, top- down legislation has recently gained more popularity as a harmonization tool, the maximum harmonization often develops through incremental convergence that combines law, implementing instruments, technical standards, and, most importantly, coordinated supervision and enforcement. This would suggest that legal harmonization is necessary but insufficient. Convergence only becomes effective when supervisory expectations, enforcement practices, and operational standards and interpretations are aligned. Otherwise, even highly harmonized legal frameworks can magnify significant differences in national regulatory culture. This realization is equally critical for the online gambling industry, as full legal harmonization from “above” is neither politically nor legally realistic, given the wide national
discretion over moral policy, public health, fiscal interests, and enforcement efforts. Simultaneously, continuous reliance on national rules in a borderless online market has already proven ineffective. The most viable path for the gambling industry is therefore incremental, functional convergence. This involves building a shared technical and operational understanding before even attempting to build a shared political one. Analysis: The mechanics of harmonization The current state of harmonization in financial services, data protection and product safety may illustrate how this process works and, most importantly, where it fails. What is harmonization? At its core, regulatory harmonization in the EU is the process of aligning different sets of national laws, standards, and practices into a coherent, compatible framework. Its primary goal is to eliminate “regulatory friction”, the extra costs and legal risks that arise when businesses must follow 27 different sets of rules for a single product, which is particularly difficult in a borderless digital landscape. Financial Services: the evolution of the Single Rulebook Financial services illustrate both failures and successes of harmonization. Early EU frameworks relied on minimum harmonization via EU Directives to be implemented in the laws of Member States, mutual recognition, and home- state supervision. The financial crisis exposed the limits of this model, as fragmentation became a systemic risk to the internal market. The EU’s response was the creation of the Single Rulebook 1 , described by the European Banking Authority (“EBA”) as “a single set of harmonized prudential rules” applicable across the EU. The shift toward instruments such as MiFID II,
1 https://www.eba.europa.eu/single-rulebook
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EMIR, and CRR/CRD IV reflects a move toward maximum harmonization. Crucially, this normative convergence was paired with supervisory harmonization through EU agencies, most notably the European Securities and Markets Authority (“ESMA”), which was granted direct supervisory powers over certain cross-border market infrastructures. Also, the Single Supervisory Mechanism (“SSM”) transferred supervision of major banks to the European Central Bank (“ECB”) 2 , explicitly to ensure that EU rules were applied consistently. What made harmonization work more efficiently in this case was partial centralization of supervision and the development of binding technical standards (RTS/ITS) that constrained national discretion. They translated high-level legislative obligations into defined, granular and directly applicable supervisory requirements. These instruments narrowed interpretative variance and limited supervisory discretion 3 . The problem of fragmented supervision On the other hand, many financial institutions provide a clear example of the limits of the current harmonisation model. For example, payment service providers (“PSPs”). Although these sit under a fully harmonised legal framework of the Revised Payment Services Directive (“PSD2”), they remain almost entirely nationally supervised. This has produced differences in supervisory culture, risk tolerance, and enforcement style that directly affect their cross-border operation. In theory, under the PSD2, a PSP authorised in one EU Member State can passport services across the EU under the same standards. In the EU, passporting is the legal mechanism that allows regulated businesses authorized in
one Member State to provide its services across the entire EU/EEA without needing additional local licenses. In practice, however, supervision and enforcement are carried out by national competent authorities, and those authorities have materially different approaches to interpretation, risk, compliance expectations, and intervention thresholds. Supervisory divergence is also visible in the intensity of enforcement. According to EBA supervisory convergence reports 4 , some authorities rely heavily on thematic reviews and early remediation, while others intervene only after breaches become material, leading to inconsistent outcomes for similar conduct. For entities operating across multiple EU Member States, this means that identical business models can face markedly different compliance burdens. The EU Commission itself has acknowledged these problems in the context of the upcoming revision of the Payment Services Directive (“PSD3”) and Payment Services Regulation (“PSR”) reforms 5 . The EU Commission explicitly argues that further harmonisation and a move toward more directly applicable rules are needed because divergent national supervision under PSD2 has undermined consistency and consumer protection 6 .
Data protection: the limits of full harmonization
The General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) represents the EU’s most ambitious legal harmonization so far. As a regulation, the GDPR applies directly across all EU Member States. However, the GDPR highlights the limits of legal convergence, since, in practice, differences in procedural law, regulatory capacity, and enforcement priorities have led to
2 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32013R1024 3 Insight: the recent adoption of the Digital Operational Resilience Act (“DORA”) represents further evolution of this harmonization logic. By man- dating common templates, timelines, testing frameworks, and reporting taxonomies, the underlying binding technical standards (RTS/ITS), and by introducing direct EU-level oversight of certain critical third-party ICT providers, DORA addresses a structural weakness of earlier harmonization efforts: the reliance on national supervisors to apply open-textured risk-management duties. In doing so, DORA illustrates a more mature form of harmonization that operates simultaneously at normative, technical, procedural and supervisory levels. 4 https://www.eba.europa.eu/activities/supervisory-convergence 5 PSD3 is the EU’s ongoing attempt to fix certain limits of harmonization; however, without creating a central supervisor. Proposed by the EU Commission in June 2023, at the time of writing, the package is still moving through the EU legislative process. The key change is that many operational and conduct rules where national divergence has been considered greatest under the PSD2 will move into a regulation, reducing scope for national interpretation. Thus, PSD3 is explicitly designed to address inconsistent supervision of PSPs, uneven enforcement of AML and safe- guarding rules as well as weaknesses in the passporting regime. While authorisation and day-to-day supervision will remain national, the package strengthens supervisory convergence tools and further clarifies host-authority powers. The PSD3 is expected to be adopted any time soon, with application likely from 2026 - 2027. It will narrow, but not eliminate, some differences in the supervisory culture across the Member States 6 https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2025/775891/EPRS_BRI%282025%29775891_EN.pdf
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inconsistent outcomes, sometimes even within one country (e.g. Germany 7 ). Thus, the GDPR vividly illustrates the limits of (almost) full legal harmonization when enforcement remains nationally fragmented. Although the European Data Protection Board (“EDPB”) can issue opinions, guidelines and even sometimes binding decisions, the investigative capacity, procedural speed, and sanctioning practice continue to vary widely. The success of technical standards In our opinion, one of the most effective models of European harmonization has been achieved through harmonisation by technical standards. Sectors such as product safety and automotive regulation demonstrate that alignment succeeds where lawmakers agree on essential objectives, while detailed, operational requirements are delegated to shared technical standards. These standards translate abstract legal principles into testable and auditable compliance criteria, allowing enforcement to converge even where national authorities retain formal competence. Harmonization works here because regulators assess risk and compliance against the same technical benchmarks. For example, the General Product Safety Regulation 8 , applicable since December 2024, sets uniform safety obligations across the EU and strengthens market surveillance, including online marketplaces. What makes this regime durable is the reliance on harmonised European standards developed by bodies such as CEN and CENELEC. Compliance with these standards provides a presumption of conformity with the EU law 9 . In other regulated sectors across Europe, harmonised legal requirements are often operationalized through independent conformity-assessment organisations that perform technical testing, auditing, and certification against shared standards. A contemporary example is the development of standards and assessment frameworks for complex artificial intelligence systems. The German standards body DIN and its partners have emphasised that even highly complex systems can be
made testable and certifiable by building common technical criteria and structured conformity assessment processes. These can be supported by accredited organisations such as TÜV AI.Lab that specialise in evaluating compliance with the criteria. This work reflects a broader approach to standardisation in areas like AI, where standards (such as DIN SPECs) define measurable requirements and accredited auditors produce reproducible evidence that a system is compliant, even where inherent complexity would otherwise impede objective evaluation. The horizontal harmonization framework applicable to online gambling Horizontal harmonization is best understood as the set of cross-sector EU regimes that bind their addressees regardless of whether the respective sectoral law is harmonized. In other words, even if EU Member States retain competence, for example, over gambling policy (licensing models, product permissions, channelisation choices), gambling operators are already subject to shared EU-level rules that partially standardize the compliance infrastructure around online gambling: how player data is processed, how payment flows are monitored and controlled, how consumer communications are assessed, how online distribution and advertising are governed, and how algorithmic systems used in risk scoring and harm detection must be governed. Thus, online gambling is already subject to meaningful horizontal harmonisation, for example, in personal data governance (the GDPR), financial integrity controls (the AMLD), consumer-facing conduct (the UCPD), online distribution and content governance (the DSA), emerging algorithmic governance (the AI Act), and many others, as this list is illustrative and not exhaustive. All these instruments form part of the existing harmonized legal framework upon which gambling-specific technical standards (e.g., common reporting formats or harm markers) can be layered to drive functional convergence without requiring politically unrealistic full harmonization of national gambling laws.
7 Due to a federative organisation of Germany, each of the German States currently has its own data protection supervisory authority, meaning there are 17 data protection supervisors in Germany (16 local and 1 federal) for the private sector that have divergent approaches even within one country 8 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2023/988/oj 9 https://single-market-economy.ec.europa.eu/single-market/goods/european-standards/harmonised-standards_en
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operators are working with the same underlying concepts, divergence would narrow automatically, even if national implementation, risk thresholds and gambling policy may still differ. A concrete example within the gambling context already exists in Germany, namely TÜV certification scheme “Geprüfte Qualität in Spielhallen” (“Tested quality in gaming arcades”), under which specialized, accredited audit organisations assess compliance with defined standards on player protection, youth protection, and operational safeguards. These audits are conducted against structured criteria, follow standardized procedures, and result in comparable, verifiable certification outcomes that regulators can rely on without conducting the technical assessment themselves. One further step towards convergence would be procedural harmonisation. One of the most recent examples of procedural harmonization from “above” is the reform of cross-border GDPR enforcement procedures. Although the GDPR achieved full legal harmonisation, enforcement of cross-border cases relied on national procedures, coordinated through the “one- stop-shop” mechanism (Art. 56 ed seq. GDPR). Cross-border cases took years to resolve and procedural differences between the EU Member States blocked consistent enforcement. The EDPB and the EU Commission acknowledged that harmonized substantive law was not enough, if procedures remained national and divergent. The EU’s proposal of July 2023 lays down common rules on the admissibility of complaints, harmonized rights of defence for investigated entities, mandatory cooperation timelines, standardized procedures for information exchange and objections, and clearer rules for dispute resolution between the data protection authorities. Adopted on 21 October 2025 and entered into force on 1 January 2026, it becomes applicable on 2 April 2027. One of the clearest operational problems for online gambling entities operating in the EU is the lack of consistent processes across borders. However, voluntary harmonization of processes should not require a central EU gambling authority. Regulators could potentially agree on procedures for cooperation and mutual recognition at the administrative level: common triggers for information exchange, aligned investigation timelines, or structured escalation mechanisms.
A roadmap for harmonization in the online gambling industry Harmonization in the online gambling industry cannot follow the same path as financial services or product safety, because gambling laws touch national moral policy, public health priorities, and fiscal interests. The EU legal framework and case law make clear that EU Member States retain wide discretion in defining their gambling policy objectives. As a result, full legal harmonization of gambling rules at the EU level is neither politically nor legally realistic. However, experience from other sectors shows that harmonisation does not necessarily need to occur at the level of policy choice to be effective. Thus, in our opinion, the most viable route to harmonization in gambling is incremental, functional convergence that begins with technical and procedural harmonisation, supervisory convergence and market-facing clarity. One of the recent examples of the combination of technical and (partly) procedural harmonization in the EU can be found in the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) mentioned above. A prominent example is DORA’s ICT incident reporting framework for financial services. Before DORA, they were already subject to incident reporting obligation; however, “major incidents” were defined differently across the EU. Financial institutions had to use different reporting templates, required different timelines and data fields. DORA addressed this by harmonizing technically and procedurally how incidents are identified, classified and reported. DORA itself sets the obligation in principle; decisive harmonization occurs through binding Regulatory Technical and Implementing Standards (RTS/ITS). Although in case of online gambling this process cannot take place top-down as described above, regulators can agree on certain common technical definitions and standards without having to agree on whether gambling should be more or less restrictive. Common harm markers, standardized player- risk indicators, shared intervention categories, interoperable reporting formats and the like would significantly reduce fragmentation in how risk is identified and assessed and how that of the operation itself is structured. Once regulators and
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While full legal harmonization without aligned procedures may still result in inconsistent application, harmonizing certain procedures first can deliver practical convergence even where substantive rules would remain national. Further harmonisation can be advanced through supervisory convergence. Gambling regulators could pursue a similar convergence pathway by jointly developing supervisory handbooks, sharing case studies, and agreeing on baseline expectations for licensing reviews, audits, enforcement and sanctions. This would not eliminate national discretion, but it may well reduce unpredictability for cross-border operators 10 . Finally, the harmonization must address market-facing clarity. Other sectors have learned that regulation, and most importantly, channelling, fails if consumers cannot recognise regulated products. In online gambling, the inability of players to distinguish legal from illegal offers undermines both consumer protection and enforcement credibility. Harmonization here means shared principles for consumer- facing signals: consistent use of licensing identifiers, clear disclosures, and restrictions on how unlicensed or hybrid products present themselves. For example, Ontario’s online gaming framework explicitly treats consumer recognition as a regulatory objective. When Ontario opened its regulated online gambling market in April 2022, regulators acknowledged that enforcement alone would not displace the unregulated market unless players could clearly recognise which offers were legal and regulated. To address this, Ontario implemented a market-facing clarity model built around three elements: visible regulatory signals, clear public communication, and restrictions on how unregulated or non- authorised operators may present themselves.
In 2023, Ontario’s authorities published research 11 howing that more than 86 percent of Ontario’s online gamblers knowingly play on regulated sites. The study explicitly links this outcome to visibility, recognisability, and trust in the regulated market. The Ontario Attorney General described this as a “made-in- Ontario” model that displaces the unregulated market by making regulation visible to consumers. In contrast, in many European gambling regimes, players struggle to distinguish legal from illegal offers, especially online and in hybrid formats. Ontario’s experience mirrors what the EU has learned in product safety (CE-marking) and food regulation (mandatory labelling): consumer-facing signals are essential for enforcement credibility. Where consumers can easily identify regulated and legal products, regulators gain leverage; where they cannot, unregulated markets may still flourish. This is particularly important for hybrid gaming formats, which often fall outside traditional gambling definitions thus remaining license-free but which function similarly from the user’s perspective. Harmonisation would require a functional approach to such hybrid and/or borderline products. Prediction markets 12 , sweepstakes, social casinos, gamified investment tools, and media-based prize formats cannot be regulated effectively through rigid category boundaries. Other sectors have moved toward activity-based regulation, focusing on risk and consumer impact rather than formal labels. Gambling regulators will need to adopt the same logic if they want convergence in EU online gambling markets, especially where users need to distinguish license-free models from illegal gambling offers.
10 Germany illustrates how procedural harmonisation can be achieved within a decentralised legal framework. In the data protection field, the Data Protection Conference (Datenschutzkonferenz, “DSK”) serves as a coordination body through which federal and state data protection authorities agree on common interpretations, procedural approaches, and enforcement priorities. A similar logic underpins the creation of the Joint Gam- bling Authority of the German Federal States (Gemeinsame Glücksspielbehörde der Länder, GGL), which consolidates operational enforcement and provides a single procedural interface for licensing, supervision, and enforcement, despite gambling law remaining rooted in local legislative competence. 11 https://www.agco.ca/en/news/over-86-ontarios-online-gamblers-play-regulated-sites-study 12 Prediction markets sit at the intersection of gambling, financial instruments, and digital platforms, making them a stress test for Europe’s regulatory architecture. Across European single market, prediction markets are treated inconsistently. In some jurisdictions they are classified as gambling, in others they may resemble financial derivatives or fall into grey, unregulated areas. In summary, there is no dedicated framework at the EU level. Cross-border by design, they raise familiar concerns: consumer protection, market integrity, AML, and data governance. Horizontal EU rules (AML, GDPR, DSA) already apply, but there is lack of consumer-facing markers clearly distinguishing license-free, admissible offers from illegal gambling
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logic, support automated monitoring systems. National standardization bodies have already voted in favour of EGBA-proposed initiative. Once widely adopted, these markers will function as a de facto pan-European technical standard for detecting risk. According to EGBA, “The finalisation process is expected to be complete by early 2026. Once published, the standard will be available for voluntary adoption by gambling regulators and operators across Europe.” While these are not formal EU standards, the protocols being developed establish de facto templates for how complaints, notices, and enforcement actions should be formatted and transmitted. However, such cooperation is still fragmented and decentralized 13 . Nevertheless, regulators in multiple EU Member States are already participating in bilateral and multilateral data exchanges on and actions against illegal operators. On 12 November 2025, regulators from Germany, Austria, France, Great Britain, Italy, Portugal, and Spain signed the cooperation arrangement structured into three pillars of collaboration: exchanging information on unlicensed operators, coordinated action urging removal of illegal gambling advertising, and sharing methods for identifying, investigating, and sanctioning operators. All these initiatives pave the way for gradual convergence in the European online gambling market, that may significantly reduce fragmentation in near future. This bottom-up convergence would definitely benefit from active EU participation, particularly in supporting technical standards, coordinating enforcement practices, and ensuring interoperability across national frameworks.
Conclusion: Outlook for the Gambling Industry EU standardization bodies and gambling authorities seem to have already started down the suggested path. Technical harmonization through common standards is already taking root in the online gambling industry. CEN (European Committee for Standardization) has approved standards such as EN 17531 for reporting in support of supervision of online gambling. This standard creates a shared data and reporting architecture, meaning regulators can compare apples to apples across jurisdictions. Over time, de facto harmonization of technical standards is likely to generate product-level convergence across the EU. In practical terms, gambling products themselves may increasingly be structured and presented in a uniform manner across jurisdictions, to a large extent without national deviations in product design, algorithmic logic, or product text. That said, divergent national framework conditions will continue their influence even with existing common standards (for example, Germany’s player limit rules), and technical harmonization alone will not entirely eliminate those structural differences. Further, the European Gaming and Betting Association (“EGBA”) has been actively involved in developing harm markers: standardized indicators of risky or harmful behaviour. While this is not the EU law, the initiative has gained traction among national regulators as a reference model for safer gambling frameworks. These markers aim to define common behavioural risk signals (e.g., escalating deposits, rapid session frequency), enable standardised intervention
DR. WULF HAMBACH Founding Partner, Hambach & Hambach Law Firm For more information contact w.hambach@timelaw.de +49 89 38997572. DR. STEFANIE FUCHS- RAICHER Senior Partner, Hambach & Hambach Law Firm CHRISTINA KIRICHENKO Senior Associate, Hambach & Hambach Law Firm
13 Example: A Consumer Protection Cooperation (CPC) Network under EU consumer law (https://commission.eu- ropa.eu/live-work-travel-eu/consumer-rights-and-complaints/enforcement-consumer-protection/consumer-protec- tion-cooperation-network_en) provides a good example of a centralized cooperation. National authorities exchange standardized requests, alerts, and enforcement actions through a shared system when dealing with cross-border in- fringements. This network demonstrates how templates for complaints, evidence, and enforcement requests become harmonised through practice. Several gambling-related cases involving misleading promotions and illegal offers have been handled through this framework, reinforcing common enforcement formats
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Winning by working together TIM MILLER , EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR AT THE UK GAMBLING COMMISSION, TALKED TO EDITOR-IN CHIEF SIMON PLANZER ABOUT THE BLACK MARKET, RESEARCH FUNDING AND GREATER SUPPORT FOR THE REGULATED MARKET. Simon Planzer: Let's start with some details about you. What does your Executive Director role entail?
them from being able to keep pace with changes that are happening in the industry that they regulate. In general, the Gambling Act enabled us to be able to adjust regulation to suit the circumstances and the reality of the world that we were regulating. That's probably one of the reasons why it has stood the test of time. Typically, big pieces of legislation don’t survive unchanged for as long as the Gambling Act has. The fact that there haven't been significant changes to the legislation in all that time is probably testament to the good job Parliament did at the time. The other big success for the British gambling market is the fact that I think it allowed a diverse and very competitive market to develop. It's one of the reasons why I think we have historically had pretty good channelization rates here compared to some other jurisdictions, because most normally accepted forms of gambling are licensed and regulated. Here in the UK, there's a huge amount of consumer choice. So now, almost anything that a consumer would reasonably want to do within the gambling market, they're able to do here within an environment that's well regulated. That is something that a lot of jurisdictions look at. I know when talking to folks in the United States, for
Tim Miller: I have a pretty broad portfolio comprising policy, research and statistics which has included overseeing the implementation of the UK government's Gambling White Paper. For the last year or so I’ve also been acting executive director for operations, which covers all key regulatory functions: licensing, compliance, enforcement and so on. I also head up a new illegal markets program, funded by the additional government resource that was announced in the budget. It sounds a lot but it’s a really enjoyable job, but then my first job was regulating lawyers. After that everything else is easy. SP: The UK is a long-standing regulated market and widely seen as a successful one. What is it about the market structure, the regulation or the way it has been managed that have been pivotal to that success? TM: I think there are a few things. The first is that the 2005 Gambling Act was quite an enabling piece of legislation. Having worked in lots of regulators, there’s sometimes a frustration when the legislation ties the regulator’s hands and prevents
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example, legislators say: Look, we don't want to be an iGaming state. The reality is, in today's world, you are an iGaming state, whether you like it or not. The question is, do you regulate it? Do you license it? Do you protect consumers? And do you get the tax revenue from it? I think Britain has shown, despite being a pretty small country, you can have quite a large, vibrant, regulated gambling market. SP: You touch immediately on an extremely important point in the fight against illegal gambling. There are essentially two sides. One is the defense, what can you do as a regulator to go after the illegal offer. But there is also what we could call the offense, what can you enable as a jurisdiction to avoid people wanting to go elsewhere.
And I think the third piece of work that has to happen is looking at the demand side of the equation as well. What is it that encourages consumers to consider the illegal market and what can we do as a regulator, what can industry do and what can government do to keep our market attractive? What are the sorts of innovations we can encourage that protect consumers and meet our licensing objectives but also increase the appeal of the consumer offer.
One of the recent examples came out of some of the reforms in the UK Gambling White Paper which allowed casinos to have sports books on their premises for the first time. A few weeks back, I visited the Hippodrome in London, where they've opened Paddy’s Sportsbook in partnership with Flutter. It's an amazing venue and the sort of place you would want to spend some
" In today's world, you are an iGaming state whether you like it or not. The question is, do you regulate it, do you protect consumers and do you get the tax revenue? "
TM: Definitely. I would say there are actually three areas that your
actions need address when you're tackling the black market. One of those, absolutely, is enforcement, prosecution, taking action against criminals around the world that are seeking to exploit consumers here in Britain. Over the last year or so in particular, we've had a lot of success there with huge numbers of URLs removed, websites taken down and we're making progress around prosecutions. That's all incredibly important. Then the second part is to look at those players that facilitate the operation and visibility of the illegal market and its ability to attract consumers. Increasingly we're seeing social media, big tech companies, payment providers playing a role in that. Recently I highlighted some of the challenges we've had with groups like Meta, who have not, until now, done enough to stop the so-called “not on Gamstop” sites. These target incredibly vulnerable consumers and, if we're going to have success in this battle, it is essential that companies like Meta and other tech companies, take their responsibilities seriously.
time. You can eat, have a drink, watch sport and gamble in an environment that's really appealing to consumers, but hasn't exposed them to any greater risk. We’re really keen to promote innovations like that, so if the industry has new ideas, they should come and talk to us so we can look at what are the ways that we can support them and at the same time divert attention from the illegal market. SP: You mentioned that jurisdictions have to choose between whether they regulate the market or just accept that it will exist offshore Do you think there are limits within a regulated market to the kind of products that we should be prepared to regulate, irrespective of whether people can use various means to access those products anyway? TM: I do think there are limits. If a product is designed in such a way that is confusing to consumers, that exploits consumers then I don't think something like that has a place in in the
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market. Now doesn't mean that it can't be made to be acceptable. I do think the experience here in Britain shows that there are certain types of bets, for example, that just shouldn't be made available. And I think in the United States, you're starting to see some of these concerns, particularly in relation to prediction markets, that just because you can offer a market on a particular eventuality doesn't necessarily mean that you should. When people are betting/trading on whether Nicholas Maduro is overthrown, frankly, I don't think something like that has a legitimate place in the market. Over the years in Britain, we have taken action on so called novelty markets that we felt didn't have that place, where you can't ensure their integrity. So, I do think there are limits, but a well-regulated, highly competitive and diverse market absolutely should be able to exist. SP: There has been an increased focus recently on the black market, on the unlicensed market. Do you feel you have all the tools you need to tackle the black market? TM: I think we're getting there. We're in a stronger position than we were even 12 months ago, and we will be getting more powers. The Crime and Policing Act is going through Parliament at the moment and that will give us the power to require internet service providers to take down illegal websites. So that is an important addition. But it’s not just about a wider range of tools. We need also to ensure we've got the resources to be able to secure a prosecution. You don't want to start a prosecution and then find that you're not resourced to be able to see it through. But alongside the tools and resources, the partnerships that we have formed and are forming are going to be key. Whilst, I think, as a regulator, we've done a really good job we’ve got to be realistic. We are relatively small public body based in England, often trying to tackle networks that might be based in Russia or similar places that are often associated with organized crime, with international terrorism. Realistically the UKGC is not going to be able to take those networks down by ourselves. So having partnerships with other regulators, with law enforcement, with government and tech providers is going to be essential. One of the really positive developments that we've had here in the UK in the last few weeks is the government-launched Illegal Gambling
Taskforce. This is a collection of major companies including Google, Mastercard, TikTok and Visa alongside law enforcement and gambling bodies set up to tackle illegal gambling. What’s really positive is that it’s bringing all these players together to ensure that we're all working towards some shared objectives. If you are trying to dismantle and break up criminal networks, then those of us that are on the right side need to be equally well networked and partnerships like the Taskforce will be really important to ensuring that success. SP: We often hear from regulators that they feel somewhat caught in the middle between the industry that sometimes does dumb things, and politicians who are under pressure from media or public opinion and the regulator is trying to steer a path between two competing interests. Is there a role, do you think, for the regulator to bring those together, an education role perhaps? TM: As a regulator, you do often feel caught in the middle of a battlefield. Now, whether that's between industry and government, industry and campaigners, there's a whole range of players who have all got very strong views about gambling and its regulation. But I do think we have a role to try and bring those different parties together where we can and find areas where there can be collaboration and consensus. Within our legislation, we have a statutory role as the advisor to government on all things gambling related. So that gives us a vehicle to draw together the breadth of evidence. In the Gambling Act Review, for example, our advice to government, which was made public, sought to take a very expansive view of the entirety of the evidence base, whether that was evidence generated by industry or by campaigners. The other area where regulators can play a really important part, is where you've got the space to be a bit of a thought leader. The speeches that that I give, what I say in them, is intentional. I don't just want to show up and trot out the same old messages. I want to try and have an impact with what I'm saying, to get people thinking. There is a theme in a lot of my speeches, about where different parties can collaborate, where we can work with industry and where a whole range of people can work
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