Happy New Year

[Peter Korsten]

Op 1-1-2016 om 14:30 schreef K9 Kai Niggemann:

> Interesting. I was just talking to a designer friend of mine who works for a betting company based in London how betting is only legal in so few countries. "Malta", he said....

Well, I don't know about other countries, but the Dutch government has 
the monopoly on any gambling. The Dutch would very much like to retain 
that monopoly to cash in themselves with online betting/gambling (the 
state casino chain, Holland Casino, isn't doing particularly well), but 
in this day and age, national borders inside Europe don't mean that much 
any longer. Especially when it comes to protectionism, which is what 
this is all about.

The British government would very much like to curtail or outright ban 
online gambling inside the European Union (read: in Malta), because that 
would mean they'd all flock to Gibraltar, which just happens to be a 
British overseas territory that is not a member of the EU. There's 
already a sizeable presence there.

> So who do you cater to? There can't be enough Maltese who gamble and bet for a business model, who are the customers?

Just switch on your TV and watch a commercial break. Funny, I was 
visiting my brother-in-law's today for the New Year lunch, and I got 
talking to one of his nephews while watching a football game (Brighton 
against the Wolves). He works at a company that writes games for 
gambling companies, such as slot machines. The break came, and there was 
an advert of bet365.com. "Ah," he said, "one of our customers."

There are very few products or services specifically aimed at Malta or 
the Maltese. Although I've seen food products with a Maltese name... 
made in Germany. :)

> Just very interested in an industry I know nothing about (and have a few moral problems with), without wanting to judge it, you or the customers...;)

To be honest, I know very little about the industry either, or even the 
company I'm going to work for. The code I've been working on so far 
deals with loading and validating CSV files of sports, mainly football. 
This data is analysed and I'm assuming that the outcome is the odds on 
coming matches. Betting companies use this data.

As for morals, it's not something I particularly care about. I don't 
care for betting or gambling myself, at all. The one industry I wouldn't 
want to work in is the defence industry, where you're building products 
designed to kill people.

I've got a colleague (for one more week), a very bright girl young 
enough to be my daughter, and she can go far with the right guidance. 
She's quite into church things and refuses to work in the 
betting/gambling industry (which the Maltese euphemistically call 
iGaming). To each his own.

In the end, it's something that people do. You may try to ban it, like 
they did with alcohol during the Prohibition, but what's important is 
that it is regulated. We've had some incidents with some companies where 
the employees were paid in cash each week, with the money coming by boat 
from Sicily. Ahem. :) But the biggest players in the market are all from 
western and northern Europe, particularly Sweden.

As far as anything can ever be massive in Malta, this is becoming very 
massive. It's causing massive problems for existing software firms, who 
are used to pay much lower wages. These iGaming firms have a lot of 
money and can easily pay 50% more.

But look at the bright side: Malta is experiencing solid economic growth 
(the 2008 crisis never really happened here) and is practically at the 
point where it becomes a net contributor to the EU, so your precious tax 
euros will flow elsewhere. :)

- Peter