The British Gambling Commission and Malta Gaming Authority have formalised their relationship.

UK.- The British and Maltese gambling regulators have announced that they have entered into a formal Memorandum of Understanding (MoU). The British Gambling Commission and Malta Gaming Authority (MGA) already collaborated in certain areas, but the new agreement formalises their relationship.

The regulators said they would share information and intelligence to improve gambling regulation, protect customers, particularly vulnerable players, and to prevent criminal activity. The agreement is intended to enhance the regulators’ respective regulatory frameworks and better address common challenges. The MoU may also lead to the development of future joint projects.

Andrew Rhodes, CEO of the Gambling Commission, said: “We are keen to continue strengthening our efforts to raise standards across the industry. This includes tackling common challenges such as illegal gambling. We will also explore future collaboration including initiatives like shadowing and addressing key issues in areas like AML and sports betting integrity.”

The MGA’s CEO, Charles Mizzi, said: “Our longstanding informal collaboration with the Commission has already delivered meaningful outcomes and the formalisation of this cooperation is definitely a step in the right direction. In line with our regulatory objectives, we are confident that such collaboration will allow us to address common challenges more effectively, allowing us to continuously improve on the effectiveness of our processes and framework.”

Meanwhile, the Gambling Commission has announced a new prioritisation of data analytics to monitor unlicensed gambling and launch more effective enforcement actions against black market operators. It’s published a new ‘evidence-led’ methodology that it says will identify unlicensed online gambling operators, allowing it to estimate the size of the black market more accurately.

New measures will include a new cease-and-desist process targeting unauthorised prize draws and competitions, the growth of which has raised concerns at HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) and the National Crime Agency (NCA). The regulator also intends to expand its work with search engines to remove unlicensed gambling content from Bing and Yahoo Finance as well as Google results. It also plans to increase its collaboration with the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit and payment providers.