New Gaming Act approved by Maltese Parliament

On 8 May 2018, the Maltese Parliament approved the third and final reading of a new Gaming Act, that will come into force on 1 July 2018 for remote operators and on 1 January 2019 for land-based operators. Subsidiary legislation, a series of directives, codes and guidelines will deal with detailed licensing and regulatory issues.

Amongst other things, the new Act replaces the current multi-licence system with a two-licence system – a business-to consumer (B2C) licence and a  business-to-business licence (B2B) – covering different types of activities across multiple distribution channels.

A press release published by the Malta Gaming Authority (“MGA”) on 9 May (that can be downloaded below) states that the new Act will “elevate the jurisdictional profile of Malta from a regulatory perspective by strengthening the MGA’s supervisory role, specifically the compliance and enforcement functions to better achieve the regulatory objectives, in line with concurrent developments relating to anti-money laundering and combating the funding of terrorism”.

For further background to this development, you can access the MGA’s July 2017 White Paper to Future Proof Malta’s Gaming Legal Framework here.

Update: David Clifton is quoted in a Gambling Compliance article entitled “Malta regulators plot ambitious self-exclusion plan”. The article focuses on the MGA’s proposed cross-border self-exclusion system under which what it calls a “unified” system would be introduced across its 275 online gambling licensees to cover all of Europe.