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The Gaming Sector Rakes in a Cool €1.56 Billion for Malta’s Economy
By Jeff Osienya Jun 25, 2020 IndustryThe MGA has released a report of the gaming industry performance for 2019. The numbers are looking good with €1.56 in revenue contribution to the local economy and about 11,800 employment opportunities.In 2019, the gaming industry in Malta solidified its position as the third-largest contributor to the county’s local economy, excluding the public administration. This is according to the Annual Report and Financial Statements released by the Malta Gaming Authority (MGA) on Tuesday.
Last year, Malta’s gaming industry brought in a whopping €1.56 billion to the economy, representing a growth of 9.6% over 2018, which in turn was about 11.9% higher than 2017’s economic input from the gaming sector. Thanks to this steady momentum, the economic contribution from Malta’s gaming industry has increased to 13.3%, which is up from 2017’s 11.3% when the gaming industry generated €1.1 billion in gross value.
More Employment Opportunities in Gaming
By the end of 2019, the gaming sector directly accounted for over 7,400 full-time employment opportunities in the country, up 9.1% from the previous year. Moreover, gaming in Malta has also been contributing to the generation of value accrued from input-output connections to other major economic sectors such as ICT, finance, hospitality and catering, distributive trades, and even real estate.
Now, if we take into account the job opportunities that were created by activities within or associated with the gaming sector, the number of full-time employees in the industry increases to nearly 11,800. This figure is equal to about 4.8% of the total economy. However, looking at the nationalities of the gaming employees, 64% of the staff working in the online sector in 2019 was non-Maltese, a figure that had gone down 3.3 points from 2018.
Awarding of licenses, Cancelations, and Fines by the MGA
When it comes to regulation, the MGA also went full throttle in 2019. 294 companies held 298 MGA gaming licenses in total by the end of the year, compared to 2018 where 283 companies held 286 licenses in total. Overall, the country’s ombudsman received 89 fresh applications of licenses and among these, 53 licenses were granted and 44 were either withdrawn or rejected, inclusive of license applications that had been received the year before in 2018.
Additionally, by the time the year was ending, 23 administrative fines had been imposed on operators while 89 Notices of Breach and 20 warnings were issued after a range of regulatory violations. For extreme transgressions, 11 licenses were suspended and 14 others were permanently canceled.
Malta’s gaming regulator also conducted 1,300 screening assessments for criminal probity, whereas its Fit & Proper Committee rendered 15 companies and individuals unfit after they were found to have fallen short of the gaming watchdog’s integrity standards. The outcome here was largely based on non-compliance with anti-money laundering and financial terrorism guidelines.
Operator and Player Imposed Exclusion Requests
Data from MGA’s 2019 Annual Report and Financial Statements also disclosed that about 1.2 million players self-excluded from gaming while 400,000 more self-exclusion requests were imposed by gaming operators. Of the self-excluded players, 27% requested exclusion for one month while 31% requested for indefinite exclusion. For operator-imposed exclusions, on the other hand, 82% of the players were excluded indefinitely.
While over a third of online players chose indefinite self-exclusion, brick and mortar gamers in Malta opted for a six-month or one-year self-exclusion, nearly in equal measure. Furthermore, the data showed that players between 25 and 34 years made the most exclusion requests at 42%, followed by 35 to 54-year-old players at 34%. 18% of the requests on the flip side were made by players in the 18-24 age group while only 6% of players over 55 years opted for self-exclusion. Regarding gender, 75% of the overall self-exclusion requests on both online and land-based gaming facilities were made by males.
Revenue Throughput by Gaming Product Classes
For 2019, Casino products such as slot machines and table games categorized under Type 1 gaming accounted for 56% of the net gaming revenue, higher than the 55.4% that was recorded for 2018. Besides, 75% of Type 1 revenue was garnered from slot machine gaming.
Sports betting, which is under Type 2 gaming went down 2.7 points year-on-year after bringing in 36.3% of net gaming revenue, whereas Type 3 gaming accounted for 7.7%, up 2.2 points from the previous year. Type 3 gaming is largely composed of poker but lotto, bingo, and exchange betting are also tallied under the same class of gaming.
All in all, online operators licensed by the MGA reported an increase in active player accounts to 20.4 million up 12.6% from 2018, owing to an 11.7% rise in the number of new active player accounts to 13.8 million.
As impressive as these 2019 numbers are, however, 2020 numbers aren’t expected to look this good due to the impact of the Coronavirus on Malta’s gaming industry.
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