Should the government change direction with respect to regularizing web shop gaming and grant a single license rather than nine separate ones, Craig Flowers – long considered the elder statesman of the not-yet-legal industry – says it could drastically cut expenses for web shop owners, and could help the government ensure an orderly transition into a fully regulated atmosphere. He outlined some of the advantages of a single license, beyond simplicity and control.

Challenged to say how the idea had been received in the industry, Flowers admitted to Guardian Business that the other web shop owners are not “on board” with all aspects of his single license proposal.

“The main objection is that everybody wants to have a license of their own, in their own pockets, to make their own decisions at the industry level, so as they may be able to make choices that they would want to make to go different ways and to do different things.

“It’s the same loose end concept that we have now that I keep referring to as it relates to our jitney service, where everybody is running in front of everybody saying this is competition. That is a madhouse that is out of control.

“The government has one opportunity here in my opinion to be able to put in place the necessary controls that will govern this industry forever. If you allow it to be introduced with everybody out for themselves, I think that we are going to run into the same problems at the end of the day,” Flowers said.

Still, he insisted there are significant benefits to the single license idea.

“A single license speaks to a lot of different facets. It speaks to a lot of different things. First you would have to understand that if there is one company that owns a single license, the owners of the company will be the operators of the industry.

“So if we look at “Company X” as being the holder of a license issued by the government... let’s just talk about the makeup of “Company X.” The makeup of “Company X” will be the directors, who will be the operators in the industry. There needs to be administrators in this, and we would have referred to the major or the senior operators in the industry to be the president, the vice president, the secretary and the treasurer.

The platform issue

“But the most important thing with a single license is that it comes with one platform. It comes with one database, and that is huge,” he said.

Flowers explained that web shop operators have been asked to relocate their servers to The Bahamas. 

“Let’s just look at the hardware situation alone. We must all meet the requirements of the GLI-19 Standard, which is one of the highest online gaming standards to be met in the world. These are used in the U.K. and other very stringent jurisdictions where there is online gaming.

“The issue for us is that it is very expensive for each individual to get their platform qualified. It’s in the hundreds of thousands of dollars that nine companies must pay out of this country to foreign entities to qualify their databases individually, in order to “do” one ninth of a population of less than 400,000 people.

“It is almost insane. It is almost insane, but that is what we are being asked, and no consideration is given to why.

“Why do we need nine different databases – all with different source codes, all written by different developers, all with different controls, and in some cases on different platforms?

“So that is a major concern going forward – to simplify, with one database.”

Competition

Flowers, pressed to say how there could be competition in an industry sharing a single platform, asserted that competition would not be a problem.

“The competition will come by your ingenuity, by the fact that you must now deal with your customer... You will deal competing by way of saying ‘my stores are better’ or ‘my stores are cleaner’ or ‘I can offer better service,’ ‘I can be more customer-oriented as opposed to content-oriented’,” he said.

Flowers asserted that there was no need – in such a small market – for a “competitive edge” so to speak.

“It’s not much of a sacrifice when we can still compete with service,” he said.

Cost considerations

Flowers also addressed a critical component of the equation: cost.

“Right now, the guestimated cost – based on FML’s expenses – for an IT operation just for me to run my database, for the team, the staff and all of the other personnel that support my IT department, it’s about $4.5 to $5 million per year,” he said.

“Now, if I can pay one tenth of that by consolidating and going onto one database, it makes good financial sense for me to consider. Why do I need to reinvent the wheel nine times and create chaos for the government?”

Consideration

Even though it is his idea, Flowers insisted to Guardian Business that it would benefit the whole industry.

“Is this something that can and will be considered? I don’t know. But I wrote a paper that I would have had discussions with the minister on with my thoughts as it relates to what the way forward should look like. It is certainly contradictory to a lot of things that are presently going on, but be that as it may, I must also say that the ministry was very receptive to the recommendations, and they are presently being considered as to what, if anything at this late stage, can be done.”

Gaming Minister Obie Wilchcombe has confirmed that he and Flowers did discuss the proposal.