Every market brings its own compliance challenges, and for operators spreading their influence across borders, the rulebook rarely translates cleanly from one jurisdiction to the next.
In this latest webinar hosted by SBC, Global Gambling Compliance: Challenges, Best Practice and Lessons for Operators, SBC News Editor Ted Orme-Claye sat down with Miguel Luis, Head of Compliance at LeBull, Victoria Cerioni, Legal and Compliance Manager at Novibet Brazil, and Keno Maseli, Social Responsibility and Sustainability Manager at Great Canadian Entertainment, to explore whether a one-size-fits-all compliance strategy is even possible in a landscape that keeps splitting further apart.
The panel largely agreed that global standards are tightening, though for different reasons in different markets.
Cerioni described the current period as complex but far from catastrophic, pointing to Brazil’s bonus-block mandate as an early example of friction that eased once operators and the regulator understood each other’s constraints. Cerioni said: “It’s the most complex and challenging moment, but I think it’s not going to be the worst.”
In Canada, Maseli traced how the surge of sports betting advertising following Ontario’s 2022 launch triggered public backlash that the industry has had to answer.
The Canadian Gaming Association (CGA) responded by partnering with Ad Standards on a voluntary responsible gaming code, while bills are now moving through Parliament to restrict the timing of sports betting ads. “Some pressure is good,” Maseli said. “It helps our market mature.”
Asked what operators most often get wrong when entering a new market, Cerioni didn’t hesitate: licensing structure, local tax treatment and whether the operator’s own commercial strategy is even legal on arrival.
Heavy restrictions on welcome bonuses in Brazil mean an operator built around bonus-led acquisition “definitely would not be the best place” to launch.
Luis backed this up with an example from Portugal, where casino games are taxed on gross revenue at 25%, but sports betting is taxed on turnover regardless of outcome, at 8%.
Product compliance catches operators out too, he warned, citing Portugal’s ban on card-related betting markets due to their negative connotation, even as corner betting remains permitted.
However, not all strict regulators look the same.
Luis split the field in two: the UK and Netherlands are both strict and transparent, issuing large, public fines that double as a warning to the wider market. Portugal and Italy are equally strict, he said, but far less public about enforcement. His own view was clear: public fines carry a reputational cost that reinforces compliance culture across the whole market, not just for the operator being fined.
Cerioni gave the clearest picture of what it looks like to build compliance from scratch. Brazil’s regulatory framework was first proposed in 2018 but wasn’t published until December 2023, leaving a five-year grey period where operators ran on frameworks imported from other jurisdictions. Cerioni said: “I cannot say if the Secretariat of Prizes and Bets (SPA) made a mistake. It’s part of a regulation… we have some points that need a better approach. But it’s something that we are building.”
Intervention from Brazil’s judiciary and legislature adds another layer of complexity, forcing compliance teams to seek visibility not just into the regulator, but into Congress and the courts too.
Globally, the bar for player protection keeps rising, and failing to meet it is exactly what invites the political pressure that leads to tighter regulation. Alberta’s imminent launch is already proof of the lessons being carried forward, with a centralised self-exclusion scheme live from day one, something Ontario took four years to build.
Asked to boil it down to a single principle for adaptable compliance, Luis kept it simple: build from the cornerstones shared across mature markets, then localise.
Cerioni and Maseli both pointed to the same underlying idea: that the relationship with the regulator matters as much as the framework itself, particularly in markets still learning how to regulate.
As jurisdictions keep splitting into their own regulatory paths, that local fluency, layered on shared fundamentals, is what separates operators who scale smoothly from those who don’t.
