Miles Benham | Managing Director & Senior Advocate | Update August 2009 on Online Gambling was originally published 02 August 2009
The Isle of Man has always been an innovator in the regulation of online gambling. Back in the distant days of 2001 the Island bravely led the way with the regulation of online gambling. During the last 8 years the Island has continually adapted its regulatory model to stay at the forefront of the industry and to attract operators that want a safe base for their established businesses. The last 12 months have seen the most innovative changes to the Islands regulatory model and this article ‘Update August 2009’ will briefly cover the main changes.
The first change that occurred was to the regulator itself – the Isle of Man Gambling Supervision Commission. The online gambling commission has been restructured and its staffing levels increased. The regulator is now more of a “heavy weight” and has senior inspectors with the necessary experience and ability to deal with the complex regulatory environment of online gambling.
A recent innovation has been the development of the £5,000 a year sub-licence. This was requested by the various software companies that have set up on the Island. The software companies wanted the ability to allow their clients to run certain parts of the online gambling site themselves. e.g. payment systems, player registration, call centre services. The difficulty the software companies had was that while they could themselves, as licensed entities, run white label sites for their clients, if their clients ran parts of the site themselves then they would also need to have a full online gambling licence and a full licence costs £35,000 a year.
The £5,000 a year sub-licence allows operators to provide their customers with a “white label” of the operator’s games but with the ability for the customer to run parts of the site themselves under the sub-licence thereby giving the customer more autonomy over the site.
