The new British Gambling Act comes into force this weekend, and at its head will stand the new Gambling Regulation Commission, which boasts a staff of 200, twice the number of employees of the old Gambling Regulation commission.
The intended duties of the new Gambling Commission are doubtful. Prime Minister Gordon Brown has already killed off two separate realms of responsibility. The planned supercasinos were never built, and their creation is now doubtful under the present government. In addition, Britain as a haven for the world’s online gambling industry has also failed. The British invitation toward the online casinos, inviting them to transfer to Britain to be regulated has been met well. This fact demonstrates that even after the British Government watered down its promises, it fails to deliver even on the counts it did intend to.
Once, the British Government, under Tessa Jowell, was aiming to make Great Britain a safe haven for the worldwide online casino industry. Unlike the bull headed Americans, Britain would be pragmatic: the operators would be treated as legitimate businesses if they agreed to act responsibly. However, this plan has not worked. A mere 14 online poker and casino operators have registered for UK licences and virtually none is a mainstream company. The explanation is simple: nobody wants to pay tax at the UK rate of 15% of gross profits.
In order to fall within the regulated British ‘white list" an operator merely has to operate from within the European Union. This suddenly makes Malta exceedingly popular all of a sudden. In the borderless world of the internet, the computer servers that power online casinos can be located anywhere in the world. In light of this, tax rates in Malta have been cut to 2.5%; at the last count, 200 online gambling companies had applied for licences there. The Gambling Commission's bureaucrats in Birmingham have been bypassed.
The operators themselves are unrepentant. William Hill, which has relocated its servers from the Dutch Antilles to the Med, says it would be at a competitive disadvantage if it did anything else. "We are duty bound to run the company as efficiently as possible," it says.
This is the same William Hill whose fortunes, like those of all high street bookies, were transformed when the government deemed that the electronic roulette wheels in its shops were legitimate. That decision seemed to defy previous legal interpretations, but there's no going back now.
The industry's view is that Britain might care to cut its tax rate to match Malta's. That is not going to happen: it knows the headlines in the Daily Mail would be horrible.
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