UK Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell said she plans to invite the International Monetary Fund and World Trade Organisation along with ministers from all the main offshore gambling jurisdictions, such as Antigua, Costa Rica and Gibraltar, to a summit aimed at setting up a new international code of practice for online gambling.
The conference planned for October is part of the UK Government’s intention to take a global lead on issues involving online gambling. Ms Jowell said she understands that Britain could face an uphill task in persuading offshore jurisdictions to put at risk a lucrative source of revenue by tightening regulations.
“I don\’t pretend that it will be easy or straightforward to put together an agreement,” she said. “It\’s perfectly possible we will provide these protections here in the UK but people in significant numbers will continue to gamble online with sites in centres such as the Cayman Islands.”
In separate news, Fairground Gaming and Chartwell Technology announced their attendance at the KPI Summit to be held at the London Stock Exchange on June 30 with the aim to define the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for the iGaming sector. KPIs to be defined will include Turnover, Customer Lifetime, Lifetime Customer Value and Active Players.
Earlier last week, Chartwell announced its financial results for the six months ended April 30. Compared to the same six-month period of 2005, total revenue increased by 5.8% to $9.19m, software license fees increased by 5.7% to $8.72m, operating margins decreased to 13.1% from 43.9% and net earnings as a percentage of revenue decreased to 6.5% from 27.8%.
UPDATE: the KPI Summit, scheduled at the London Stock Exchange for June 30, will be postponed to include additional iGaming operators eager to contribute, but unable to lend their suggested KPI definitions before that date. Additionally, the Group wishes to include the findings of a private discussion on KPIs held on June 13 in Gibraltar and is also considering the inclusion of additional members from the financial community. The goal of all concerned is to create a set of KPIs that accurately represents the benchmarks in the iGaming sector. This will ultimately help individuals and institutions invest confidently in the business of iGaming.
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