And on it rises

I note that, according to a research piece put out by Barclays today, "investir.fr estimates that there are 20,000 websites operating in France that offer gambling."

So, from 5,000, to 15,000, to 20,000, in the space of months.

Good legislation, that.

The growing black market

I've just seen a report of the presentation in late April by the EU Commissioner Michel Barnier on his work programme for the immediate future of the European Parliament's Internal Markets Committee.

Aside from the fact that he praised the Schadelmose report, my response to which was pre-blog and was therefore published in Parliament Magazine and can be seen here, it is notable to me that the new Commissioner warned against the existence of 15,000 illegal gambling sites.

When the French did their lengthy report into online gambling, the Durieux report, they talked about there being 5,000 illegal sites.

Many times since, I have commented, on this blog and publicly, that 5,000 is an awfully large number of operators, when you consider that after 10 years in the industry, I could probably name you 30 at a push. Now, it seems we have 15,000 operators - three times as many!

To me, it suggests one of two things: either politicians are pulling numbers out of the air for effect; or the failure of politicians to regulate in a way which allows competitive product to be offered to people has resulted (and will continue to result) in the massive growth of the black market.

Which is it?

Sacré bleu

I see that the French are expecting to have 30 applications for licences under their new gambling legislation.

That's down from the 200 that they originally expected; and from the 100 that they revised that estimate to; and the 50 that they then settled on.

And it's a far cry from the 5,000-odd online gambling sites that they identified in their government-commissioned Durieux report.

I wonder what that tells us.

Estonia

The latest barmy action by a government as regards internet gambling has seen Estonia step up to the plate. As reported in Gambling Compliance today, the government there has instructed internet service providers to block access to "175 unlicensed internet gambling sites". Among the list are the brand names that you would know and recognise, other than that, by some quirk of fate, Paddy Power and bet365 have not fallen victim - yet.

The Durieux report commissioned by the French government estimated that there are 5,000 internet gambling websites out there. I wonder what Estonia plans to do about the other 4,825?

Surely it mist be abundantly clear to anyone with a brain that by definition, the sites that Estonia will name as the ones to block are the ones which are most likely to be licensed elsewhere, because otherwise the chances of Estonia ever having heard of them would be pretty slim.

Why is there any need for 5,000 sites to exist, other than because idiotic governments ban sites which consumers want to access, and encourage other people to set up sites to take advantage of the fact that those consumers are looking for a site which no Civil Servant has chanced upon?

So little thought is put into what the aim is that when Italy went down the same route, they temporarily blocked a chemical company's website, because they just assumed (and didn't check) that Gala Coral's website would be coral.com.

It should be funny. But it isn't.

Conferences....

It's been an interesting week for conferences, not to say something of a conference fest. There have been four or five running concurrently in London, and a Thoroughbred Breeders' Conference in Ireland. I was called at the start of the week by a conference organiser who wanted to know what the industry needed in terms of conferences. "Fewer of them" was probably not the answer she wanted.


Still, there were some interesting comments made, as well as some fairly shocking ones. Hearing that the RGA was described by a racing Chief Executive as as ‘shabby’, ‘discredited’, ‘myopic’ and ‘old-school’ certainly fell into the latter category, but there were some more progressive and somewhat less personal views aired as well.


One gentleman who approached me after I had spoken to the European Casino operators said to me that he agreed with my argument about the need for quicker regulation to be enacted if Europe is to retain control of its destiny, from a macro-economic perspective. But his concern, he said, was that the market couldn't sustain more than a handful of operators. It was not sensible, in his view, just to set the regulatory standard and to license anyone who passed it, because it would be impossible to control the thousands of companies who would operate in your country.


Surely, if the UK market proves anything, it is that when markets are liberalised, they actually settle very quickly: although you need to make sure that you offer a complete range of products to cover all the variations of consumer demand, a handful of operators can actually fairly easily cover the bases that are needed. In other words, if consumers do, as I often suggest, find the product they want at the price they want it in an internet world, you don't need more than 20 or so operators to cover all tastes.


It's interesting, with that in mind, to ponder exactly why there are 5,000 gambling operators out there (by the estimates of the French government's Durieux report). I would argue that the reason is precisely because governments try to criminalise the activity of betting. I've worked in this industry for 10 years and I can't name more than about 30 operators internationally. How would an average consumer be able to do more? It's only multiple fragmentation - the direct result of prohibition - which creates so many options, which by definition (or perhaps design) are impossible to police.