MAX DRAYMAN AT ICE 2011:
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18 February 2011
The ICE or International Casino Exhibition is held every year at the end of January at Earl's court in London. It's a gathering place for casino software providers, ecash companies, casino operators, licensing commissions, and just about every aspect of the online casino industry is represented there. |
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| ICE 2011 |
Bing! bang! boom!, and ICE was once again upon us. Normally I quite look forward to this annual event but from my side of the paddock it's been a pretty tumultuous year in the industry: major UIGEA-aftershocks in the form of financial processor seizures that seriously rocked the whole US sector, a number of super-heated player issues involving big operators and operators that had showed big promise, a whole layer of "in the game" operations that simply collapsed under the pressures that be, and a real and significant stratification of the licensing agencies that are all too often the ghosts in the machine of the online gaming industry. Well, at least those were the things in my mind as I walked up the steps to Earl's Court II and fished out my ICE 2011 pre-registration papers.
As to the basic nature and ambiance of the event I'll refer you to Bryan's excellent "Meister's London ICE Review". My attention was pretty much focused on a few central issues, the first being a "one year later" look at the changes at Kahnawake:
Kahnawake: Say Hello To An Industry Leader
Last year we sat down with the senior people of the Kahnawake Gaming Commission of which I later wrote "I can't help but say that I am optimistic. They seem very serious about this and are saying all the right things." This year I am happy to report that the promise has become reality. Say what you will about Kahnawake's past but the reality today is that they are looking very much like the best licencing agency in the business.
I'm well aware of how bold a claim that may sound to some. By even suggesting such a thing I am probably putting myself in the line of fire but so be it because from my side of the industry -- player complaints and dispute resolution -- Kahnawake is today the cleanest, most pro-active, and most cooperative regulatory body to be found. Talk is cheap but it's more than that by far, in fact it's a simple matter of the numbers: take the number of (active) licenced casinos within the licencing agent's roster VS the number of legitimate complaints naming those casinos; or simply look at the number of player issues referred to the licencing body that are satisfactorily resolved.
If you look at the 300 or so issues that come to us here at Casinomeister via the Pitch-A-Bitch process as your sample space the bottom line is that Kahnawake has had the best numbers by far this past year. A very small number of our Pitch-A-Bitch issues involved their casinos -- I'm talking about two (2) percent or less of their casinos involved in legitimate disputes -- and only one, yes a single issue, had to be deferred to the Kahnawake Complaints Department because of non-cooperation from the casino. And Micki, the KGC's Dispute Management person. resolved that issue in favour of the player within a few days.
The signicance of this is hard to overestimate. Kahnawake now has the lowest complaints ratio of any licencing body in the business. Gibralter comes close but it has far fewer licencees and a few of those produce a disproportionate number of complaints. Malta is a toothless joke by comparison. Curacau is worse. Isle of Man is okay but hardly proactive when it comes to player dispute resolution. Antigua not so good. Alderney, fair and possibly improving. And so it goes. The point is that Kahnawake is leading the pack in terms of real, hands-on regulatory compliance among it's licencees with the result that players are finally seeing a dream coming true: an honest licencing body that controls its licencees and deals with player issues swiftly and fairly.
In a recent bold move the KGC has allowed some public insight into their new process by publishing a Summary of their dispute resolution efforts for the past year (see http://www.gamingcommission.ca/news/pr02152011a.pdf). As of this writing they are the only licencing and regulatory body to do so. Brian Cullingworth (aka Jetset) did an article on the Summary that's well worth checking out:
Kahnawake Dispute Stats
The question I hear people asking is "Why them? What has Kahnawake got that's any different than the rest?" Good question, simple answer: they can pull the plug on a non-compliant licencee. Literally, they can turn out the lights on them. The reason is that Kahnawake provides the hosting for their licencees and that means that as the casino's licensor and regulating body they pretty much have ultimate control over whether the licencee continues to do business, or not. I reckon that provides a pretty powerful incentive for compliance and cooperation.
Towards the end of our meeting one of the senior people at the KGC suggested that Bryan might add a new category to his annual Best And Worst Awards, "Best Regulator" he offered. We'll see what Bryan has for us next year but I think that exec and I both know who would have won the award this year.
The Fallout from UIGEA Continues
This past year has been a rough one for US-facing casinos. As the feds put the screws to the people processing money for the online gaming industry they are slowly but surely choking off the operators who depend on their US players. 2010 started out bumby with the Mastercard seizures early in the year, continued with a number of smaller processor disappearances, and ended with the eWalletXpress confiscations late in the year. It was a tough time for anyone accepting US bets.
We know from our industry connections that the situation in the US is serious stuff but the effect of this was actually visible on the floor of the ICE exhibition. For instance Cryptologic, once one of the most powerfull and promising e-gaming companies in the business, have been a solid fixture at ICE since the beginning and always had a sizable and well-staffed booth. Not so this year because they weren't even there. This is unheard of! It's only speculation that the US issues are the reason for Crypto's no-show but their licencee group has been steadily shrinking over recent years and that's got to mean something.
Another sad note was that smaller, younger operations are simply getting the stuffing kicked out of them by the US situation. Lock Casino was one of last year's bright and promising lights but almost from the time we returned from ICE last year their troubles began with the US financial processors and it got worse as the year went on. I had hoped to meet with them again this year to find out how things were going and discuss the cases were players have had money due them for six or eight months now. They didn't show so none of that happened. I am personally disappointed by this because I had great hopes for these guys. Unfortunately I'd failed to take into account the caustic environment in which they'd tried to put down roots and just how devastating that could be for their new casino venture.
At first glance it's hard to understand what's happening in the US in terms of this financial stuff but it basically boils down to this: when the feds scare off the big and reliable financial processors the casino operators are then forced to go to smaller, less well established people who are still willing to move their money for them. Well, to put it bluntly, these smaller guys often just skip town when the feds come sniffing. In other words they simply disappear with whatever monies they were holding at the time and the operators are left empty-handed with player debts to pay. Of course the bigger fish are less threatened by this sort of thing -- though a million bucks going "poof!" has got to be a nasty turn in anybody's day -- but the small guys are really getting pummeled. Player payments get reduced or skipped, players get pissed off (rightly so) and scoot, word gets around and suddenly life has got to be a lot tougher for these guys. Many have just folded and died. I wish those stilll in the game well but the skies of the US market are not looking any sunnier of late.
CWC and "the student clause"
One of the great things about going to ICE is that you get to settle old business from the past year. The face-to-face time at ICE is invaluable for discussing contentious issues because so much more can be said, understood and probed than is possible through our usual forms of online communication.
I think many Casinomeister readers will agree that one of the most contentious issues of the past year was the Club World "student clause" issue that raged on our forums for almost two months. I don't want to dig up any cadavers here but the crux of the issue was that CWC had withheld a player's winnings because they classified him as a student and CWC's terms specifically exclude students. The main trouble for me had been that the guy was between programs -- he had finished one and hadn't yet started the next -- when he played and won. CWC had said "you're a student" and stopped payment on the winnings.
From my point of view as the Player Complaints guy here at Casinomeister it appeared as if this "you're a student" thing was a judgement call that CWC were making. In other words it seemed as though it was their _opinion_ that the guy was a student at the time even though he wasn't actually attending classes and wouldn't be for a few months. I fundamentally disagreed with that as a valid judgement call -- where I'm from you stop being a student the day your classes end and you're not a student again until you're back in classes -- so I pretty much dug in my heals on the issue.
Well it turns out that a beer in hand and some quality face time has finally cleared the air on this one, at least for me. The truth of the matter is that under UK law a person in this particular guy's situation is legally classed as a student, there's actual legal precident for this. In other words CWC was fully correct and within their rights to rule on this case as they did. In fact they would have been remiss to have done otherwise. "If I had known that" I kept saying, looking somewhat like a beached carp I'm sure, but the CWC folks were very gratious about it and we toasted to better understandings and moved on.
So that's about it for me and ICE 2011, at least officially. Although I managed to gain some real insight into these and other issues it wasn't my best year: my stomach disagreed with a late night curry on Tuesday and the rest of ICE became a bit of a blur for me. That said the year ahead is looking good and ICE will be there again next year I'm sure. And, circumstances and Bryan's generousity permitting, so will I.
PS. For more scuttlebutt on ICE 2011 see Dave's "Review of ICE and LAC 2011"
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