REGULATION
Meeting regulation requirements and keeping up with compliance
With gambling regulations constantly evolving across various global jurisdictions, we sit down with Hass Peymani, Head of iGaming at CreateFuture to ask for his expert opinion and advice on how operators should tackle some of the largest operational challenges facing them today.
GIO: How are licensing requirements changing across major regulated markets? Hass Peymani: The licensing bar is rising. Brazil and Germany now demand higher capital and tougher technical standards. Conduct rules are deepening around affordability, marketing and responsible gambling, especially in the UK and Netherlands. And supervision is continuous, not periodic. Operators who treat compliance as a design input from day one scale faster than those who treat it as a project.
GIO: How long does the average licensing process take in major jurisdictions? HP: Timelines vary. Established regimes like Malta and Ontario can move in three to six months for prepared applicants. Other jurisdictions, particularly Germany and Brazil’s recent rounds, have run closer to a year or more. The UK and Netherlands sit in the middle. The real variable is applicant readiness. Operators who keep their documentation regulator-ready year-round move through fastest.
GIO: What are the largest operational challenges associated with multi-jurisdiction licensing? HP: The licence is rarely the hard part; it is everything behind it. Every regulator defines wallets, KYC thresholds, RG triggers and reporting cadence differently. Stack five or six markets together and compliance, data and product start fragmenting. The operators who scale cleanly run one platform that absorbs jurisdictional variation as data, rather than parallel stacks per market.
GIO: How do local licensing requirements differ between sports betting, casino, poker, and bingo? HP: Each vertical asks for different requirements. Sports betting is dominated by integrity: monitoring, sports-body agreements and suspicious activity reporting. Casino centres on technical certification, RNG and RTP testing. Poker is shaped by liquidity rules and collusion controls. Bingo, treated as lower risk, attracts lighter scrutiny in most markets. Operators running all four need systems that surface each vertical’s evidence on demand.
GIO: What are the biggest reasons operators fail licensing reviews?
HP: The operators who clear reviews cleanly share a pattern. Their policies match what the business actually does. Beneficial ownership and group governance are documented to the regulator standard well before submission. AML and RG frameworks carry evidence of use: incident logs, decision trails, audit-ready data. The common thread is preparation as a continuous activity, embedded in the operating model from day one.
GIO: What changes are expected in cross- border gambling regulation over the next three to five years? HP: Regulator-to-regulator cooperation is increasing, particularly on enforcement against unlicensed operators serving their citizens. IAGR forums and bilateral information-sharing arrangements are growing in use. AML, sanctions and sports integrity workstreams show the most cross-border alignment. Product and consumer-protection rules remain national. The observable direction is more enforcement cooperation. Regulatory convergence shows no equivalent signal.
GIO: Are regulators becoming more aligned internationally or more fragmented? HP: Both, on different axes. Alignment is real on enforcement, AML and sports integrity, helped
by IAGR, FATF and IBIA. Fragmentation remains the rule on product, conduct, marketing and tax. Regulators agree on financial crime but treat how their citizens gamble as national policy. The implication is structural: design the operating model for an enforcement-aligned, product- fragmented world from day one.
GIO: Which emerging markets are attracting the most operator interest? HP: Brazil continues to be of interest, with the regulated market opening in 2025 drawing over 100 authorisation applications. The UAE is the most-watched new opening, with the GCGRA framework still taking shape. Latin America more broadly, particularly Peru and Argentina’s provincial markets, continues to attract tier-1 entries. Africa, notably Nigeria and South Africa, remains an active growth region.
GIO: How are tax rates affecting market entry decisions? HP: Honestly, tax is one consideration in a much bigger model. The operators we work with weigh it alongside market size, payment rails, acquisition costs and regulatory clarity. A higher rate just means the rest of the business must work harder to make the economics work. The smart move is to do that modelling properly before you commit.
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