Malta’s Gaming Minister Emmanuel Mallia participated in the conference “The Developing Landscape of Gaming Regulation. What next?”
Mallia commented on various matters, related to gambling, saying that the latter has always provoked a lot of social, criminal and psychological concerns, which required from the local regulatory authorities to make sure it provides adequate controls in a few directions, including social well-being and customer protection.
The conference was initiated by the local Gaming Authority (MGA) and took place at the Hilton Portomaso Suite in St. Julian’s. It was scheduled after a group meeting of some gaming regulators’ experts was held by the European Commission. The event gathered at one place gaming regulators and advisors which operate in gaming spheres on a global scale and was aimed at providing gambling operators, software developers, regulators, investors, attorneys, etc. with the chance to meet and exchange experience and opinions on the major challenges faced in the contemporary gaming industry.
The keynote speech at the conference was delivered by the Executive Chairman of the Malta Gaming Authority Joseph Cuschieri, who emphasized on the fact how important it was for such face-to-face discussions to take place, engaging as many key industry stakeholders as possible. That Mr. Cuschieri spoke of was the importance of the clear, transparent and customer-oriented regulatory authorities’ objectives taking into account the international market development.
Minister Mallia explained that come gambling operators in the country sometimes faces difficulties when trying to find the right balance between seeking further growth for their companies and following a strategy of legal and responsible customer-oriented behaviour. He also added that this endeavour was still on the agenda, in order to make both Malta and the rest of the jurisdictions across the territory of Europe more oriented towards implementing “clear and coherent” gambling regulation.
Malta’s Minister for Competitiveness and Digital, Maritime and Services Economy also made a commentary on a recent survey that proved that gaming executives felt underpaid. Mallia explained their wages were actually larger than the ones received in the rest of the local economy’s sectors. A recent survey showed that Malta-based companies’ Chief Executive Officers could expect an annual salary of about €140,000, while the salaries of the top executives in other sectors ranged between €120,000 and €130,000.
In addition, when speaking at the MGA-initiated conference, Minister Mallia shared he was perfectly aware of the fact that currently there was no common gaming regulation on the territory of the European Union, despite the industry was getting bigger and bigger and inevitably “crossed borders”. In his opinion, the regulators should become more focused on creating such rules that could unify identical goals and points of view on the gambling regulation in the region.
- Author
Daniel Williams
