NetEnt, Betsson, and Core Gaming Latest Recipients of Official UK Gambling Licence
Last week, the UK Gambling Commission sent notification to major online gaming firms Net Entertainment, Betsson and Core Gaming, regarding the official approval of their respective UK gaming licenses. All three licence-approvals took effect last March 31, 2015, signifying that from that date onwards, the three major online gambling firms are no longer operating under the temporary continuance licence issued by the UKGC in 2014.
Net Entertainment
Net Entertainment, through its President and CEO Per Eriksson, announced that the UKGC has granted licenses for both NetEnt’s gaming software and to its business-to-business (B2B) activities of providing online gaming solutions in the UK. CEO Eriksson took pride in commenting that receiving the UKGC licence approvals is another milestone achievement for the company, because Great Britain is the largest gaming market in Europe, fundamental to NetEnt’s growth strategy of expanding in regulated markets. CEO Eriksson added that as a frontrunner in the business of providing digital gaming solutions, they want to make sure that every NetEnt player gets into their games purely for fun. He asserts that responsible gaming is a condition present in all gaming licenses held by the company, thus, its promotion is essential to them. Aside from the newly approved UKGC-issued licence, Net Entertainment also holds gaming licenses issued by the regulators of Alderney, Gibraltar and Malta.
Betsson AB
Betsson AB’s gaming subsidiary Betsson Malta, received official approval to continue offering online live and virtual sports betting products and casino, poker, bingo and scratchcard games. Registered in the UK under the trade name BML Group Ltd, and trading under the Betsafe and Betsson brands, Betsson Malta gained approval to offer online gambling products in the UK via the Betsafe, CasinoEuro and Mrs. Smith Casino dotcom sites. Betsson describes the local British licensing system as well-conceptualised, sustainable and forward looking — characteristics that are in line with Betsson’s strategy of securing licenses in countries, where the company participates actively under a commercially workable licensing system. The CEO and President of Betsson AB, Magnus Silfverberg remarked that as one of the prominent online gaming entities in Europe, it is expected of Betsson to receive approval for its application to operate in the UK market. CEO Silverberg continued by encouraging other European countries currently in the process of re-regulating to take a closer look, as well as get inspiration from the British model.
Core Gaming
The third recent recipient of the prestigious UK license approval is Core Gaming, a well-founded independent British company currently involved in the online gaming industry, as a HTML5 games developer. Over the past three years, the company has been providing its services to major operators like Bet365, Betfair, Betfred, Eurobet, Gala Coral, Ladbrokes, Paddy Power, Mecca Bingo, Unibet, Sky Vegas, and William Hill; and to gaming platform owners Game Account Network, Leander Games, Odobo, OpenBet, Quickfire, Spielo, Virtue Fusion and 888. This year, Core Gaming’s business activity has shifted from converting existing popular game contents for mobile, into building its own collection of in-house developed game contents for both desktop and mobile platforms, all built from a single HTML5 code base. According to the Core Gaming website, it is currently developing a collection of twenty (20) proprietary casino games comprising slots, table games, and instant win games, which the company will deploy in the coming weeks and months ahead, to a wider industry.
