The NSW Government has made appointments to the board of the Independent Liquor and Gaming Authority (ILGA), including a deputy chairperson and two new members.

Associate Professor Amelia Thorpe and Nicholas Nichles have been appointed following a rigorous public expression of interest selection process. Additionally, existing member Chris Honey has been appointed deputy chairperson.

ILGA is a statutory decision-maker responsible for a range of liquor, registered club and gaming machine regulatory functions including determining licensing and disciplinary matters.

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The appointments follow the end of the term of appointment for outgoing deputy chairperson Sarah Dinning, and also fill vacancies that existed on the board.

Mr Honey, who was appointed a member of ILGA earlier in 2024, has been named deputy chairperson until the end of his current appointment term (11 February 2027).

Mr Honey has extensive experience in the advisory and restructuring field, including working extensively in highly regulated sectors.

Associate Professor Thorpe and Mr Nichles have both been appointed for four years commencing 6 November 2024.

Associate Prof Thorpe is with the Faculty of Law & Justice at the University of New South Wales and an Acting Commissioner of the NSW Land and Environment Court.

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Mr Nichles was previously a Consul General and Senior Trade and Investment Commissioner for Australian Government agency Austrade, based in the US.

The new appointments bring the ILGA board membership to seven. The new appointments will join chairperson Caroline Lamb, new deputy chairperson Mr Honey and current members Cathie Armour, Jeffrey Loy APM and Dr Suzanne Craig.

Ireland’s new gambling regulator is likely to begin overseeing betting businesses in the Republic midway through next year, industry figures predict.

President Micheal D Higgins recently signed the new Gambling Regulation Act, which overhauls licensing and creates a new authority to govern betting firms, into law. Industry figures forecast that the new regime should begin operating midway through next year, a key point for many businesses as they will have to renew online betting licences by that time.

Government also has to pass several milestones before the new Gambling Regulatory Authority of Ireland can start functioning, including appointing the seven people the body requires.

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Minister for Justice Helen McEntee appointed senior civil servant Anne Marie Caulfield as chief executive designate of the authority in summer 2022. Her office has 11 staff. According to the Department of Justice, the State’s Public Appointments Service will shortly begin recruiting the authority’s seven members.

The Minister will appoint the candidates the service recommends.

The department could not say when the authority would start regulating but noted this would happen in a phased “timely manner” after its establishment.

Jack Chambers, Minister for Finance, earmarked €9.1 million for the authority next year in this month’s budget. That includes €4 million for technology.

Ms Caulfield wrote to industry organisations last week confirming that her organisation would begin its work on a “phased basis” but pointing out that it has already completed many preparations. In a statement she said that the authority was committed to keeping the industry fully informed so businesses can “plan for the new regulatory regime”.

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Meanwhile, the Public Service Appointments Service last week advertised for someone to head the authority’s social fund. Under the new law’s provisions, betting businesses will contribute to this fund which the authority will use to tackle problem gambling.

Betting businesses regard the fund’s establishment as one of the key steps towards establishing the new regime.

Alongside that, they say that the authority will also have to set up its new licensing system. The law demands that all gambling businesses operating in the Republic be licensed and makes it a criminal offence to operate without a proper permit.

Lawyers at Arthur Cox recently noted that current permits are preserved until licensing sections of the act come into force. Existing high street and online bookies’ licences will have a run-off period, but lawyers said that how this would work in practice depended on how the regulator developed the new system.

Betting businesses are keen that the authority works on a national self-exclusion register for customers who voluntarily ask bookmakers not to take their bets. Currently, most individual bookies have systems where customers who fear they have a problem, or are at risk, can exclude themselves in this way.

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The Gambling Commission has published further data on the gambling industry in Great Britain.

This data, sourced from operators, reflects the period between March 2020 and September 2024, inclusive, and covers online and in-person gambling covering Licensed Betting Operators (LBOs) found on Britain’s high streets.

Comparison should not be made with the industry statistics dataset, as this dataset may include free bets and bonuses and does not include data from all operators.

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This release compares Quarter 2 (Q2) of financial year 2024 to 2025, with Q2 of 2023 to 2024, looking at how the market has changed in comparative periods over a year.

The latest operator data shows:

• online total Gross Gambling Yield (GGY) in Q2 (July to September) was £1.32 billion, an increase of 11 percent from Q2 the previous year. The overall number of total bets and/or spins increased 12 percent Year-on-Year (YoY), reaching a new peak for the third consecutive quarter of 25.2 billion, whilst the average monthly active accounts2 in the quarter increased 8 percent
• real event betting GGY increased by 6 percent YoY to £453 million. The number of bets decreased 10 percent, while the average monthly active accounts in Q2 increased 9 percent
• slots GGY increased 16 percent to £680 million YoY. The number of spins increased 13 percent to 23.3 billion while the average monthly active accounts in Q2 increased 16 percent to 4.4 million per month. Although this is a new peak for GGY in this dataset for the slots vertical, it should be noted that one operator has re-classified some of its products into the slot vertical this quarter, which has had an impact on the vertical data
• the number of online slots sessions lasting longer than an hour increased by 9 percent YoY to 10 million. The average session length remained at 17 minutes. Approximately 6.1 percent of all sessions lasted more than one hour compared to 6.6 percent in Q2 the previous year. The number of spins per session has fallen from 147 to 142 YOY, whilst the GGY per session has fallen from £4.20 to £4.13 in the equivalent timeframe
• LBO GGY decreased by 1 percent to £533 million in Q2 2024 to 2025, compared to the same quarter last year, while the number of total bets and spins decreased by 0.1 percent to 3.1 billion.