Hiring in mature, regulated markets

People often think of mature markets as stable and secure, but in iGaming adopting this stereotypical viewpoint will quickly leave you exposed to the sometimes brutal twists and turns of the developed sectors of Western European online gambling.

In Europe there are only a handful of online jurisdictions that have the longevity to be viewed as mature and the breadth of licensing to be considered full service.

The UK, the Netherlands, Italy, Sweden and Denmark stand out in particular as longstanding examples of vibrant iGaming markets with a bevy of hard working operators and an engaged and entertained customer base.

Yet the recent history of all of these jurisdictions is mostly characterised by regulatory turmoil.

In the UK and the Netherlands, taxes have been increased and planned or enacted affordability checks have dominated the conversation.

In Sweden, taxes have also climbed in recent years, while a continuing prohibition on bonuses drives a large portion of the online casino market offshore.

Italy flipped from a fairly liberal igaming market to the first Western nation to totally ban gambling advertising in a matter of months, showing just how vulnerable seemingly mature markets can be to huge and sudden changes.

Denmark remains the most stable example from this collection of mature Western European markets, but even here there are new challenges to reckon with.

Danish politicians have begun to follow through on a long-held desire to restrict gambling advertising, with some pushing for nothing short of a total ban.

The most important lesson to take from this recent historical survey is that change is inevitable.

Even in the most longstanding online gambling markets, wise gambling businesses will spend time sourcing the intelligence to help them anticipate and react when it comes to the hires that they make.

Embedding understanding

This lesson needs to be learned across the entire business, not just in the compliance function.

The knock-on effects of a new regulatory development are often felt right across the business.

Tax rises are the most obvious example. If revenue is squeezed then something will need to change, whether that be headcount, RTP or product development spend.

Or consider changes to advertising rules, which will often demand a complete rethink from marketing teams to avoid receiving fines while still bringing in new customers.

Then there's recruitment. The natural knock-on effect of the wide-ranging impact of regulatory developments is that smart hiring decisions need to be made for teams across the entire business.

In an ideal world these hires should be focused on what the business will need in the coming months and years, instead of reacting to the changes that the team was unprepared for.

That is only possible if you base your recruitment decision making on intelligence.

These insights can come from a number of locations: you can build an internal monitoring service that tracks developments or you can rely on external sources of scraping to track regulatory developments.

However the best kinds of intelligence will come from relationships. Networking and the sharing of information within the industry remains a peerless method for understanding the road ahead when it comes to online gambling.

For all that it helps in other areas of business, AI can not yet get below the surface of what's coming to understand the human factor in predicting the flow of regulatory travel.

As a senior business leader, you will have your own network to call on in these instances, but when you want to go beyond that, the support of a trusted workforce partner such as Pentasia Edge can make the difference between planning and reacting.

Getting ahead

Planning for mature markets depends in large part on dealing with regulatory turbulence, but this is far from the only consideration.

Take AI as one example. We've been hearing for years about the potential of what AI can do for modern business and although its deployment into the world of work has been fairly rapid, any sufficiently educated corporation could have been preparing for this reality at least a year ahead.

Or consider the talent crunch currently facing a large number of gambling businesses. The staff best equipped to handle these challenges are in short supply.

An embedded workforce partner could have warned you of this well ahead of the curve. That could have led to investment in HR to ensure that the staff want to stay and that those coming through can be trained up to avoid costly hiring processes.

Or you simply could have gotten ahead of the problem and supplied your company with the staff it needed to face the next half-decade of regulatory and business challenges before the talent crunch reached critical mass.

All of this foresight is only possible when proactive minds are equipped with the correct intelligence to succeed.

In Western Europe, where established norms can be flipped upside down by the whims of politicians or the birth of a new business reality, intelligence has never been more important.