No TV Gambling For You!

However, a radical decision by Sky last month could bring a premature end to the gaming boom. British Sky Broadcasting is the operator of the UK´s largest digital television platform and a leading broadcaster of sports, movies, entertainment and news. Sky digital offers movies, news, entertainment, sport and interactive services. The platform, which launched in October 1998, allows viewers to send emails, shop on screen, play games, select their own camera angles, vote, bookmark their favorite channels, place bets and manage their finances, and until today- gamble.

Broadcasters, bookmakers, gaming operators and new digital TV companies have so far benefited from the success of interactive gaming, with one company, Avago, becoming an over-night success story simply by offering a pools-based numbers game with viewers able to play along and win cash just by pressing the red button on their remote and interacting with the presenter.

Avago became profitable within three months from launch and has built up a loyal following of more than 100,000 paying viewers nationwide in less than a year. As well as offering its main numbers game, it has now expanded its red button interactive services to enable its viewers to play a range of games. However, it is the rise of channels such as Avago and the games that it and some of the other operators offer which forced Sky at the end of last month to issue a new policy statement, which effectively outlawed all casino-type games from the Sky platform.

Last month in a letter to every operator on the platform, Sky company SSSL, which enables broadcasters and companies to run interactive services, made it clear that any games on the platform which could be considered gaming under the 1968 Gaming Act would not be allowed from July 21. This effectively prevents operators from running the lucrative roulette-based services, dice games, card games and any game which has been classified as a banker's game by the 1968 legislation.

"Our intention with this decision is to ensure that SSSL remains within the law. At present SSSL risks committing a criminal offence if an illegal gaming service is made available through the Sky digiboxes, says a Sky spokesman.

Even though the past 12 months have witnessed the emergence of pay-to-play gaming on digital television in a variety of forms including traditional betting, fixed odds numbers games, pools and casino-type dice and slot services, the growth of the sector has not been matched with new regulation.

One of the main bones of contention across the industry is the difference between gambling and gaming and where the boundaries of each start. Under the 30-year-old laws, gaming is only permitted in a licensed premises such as a casino. So operators running online gaming services on the web have been forced to go offshore, while operators wanting to launch similar services on interactive television have relied on these grey areas by labeling them as fixed odds betting services.

This move has caught the attention of the gaming regulators. According to the British Gaming Board secretary, Tom Kavanagh, some unnamed operators have been running what are essentially traditional gaming services "using bookmakers' permits".

Amanda McCrystal is head of inter active TV for Littlewoods Gaming and is responsible for developing a number of betting and gaming services for ITV. She says that it is interesting that SSSL has acted when there is such a "lack of regulatory clarity in the market" and she warns that there will be some fall-out from the operators.

There have also been questions asked about whether it is the place of a Sky company (SSSL) to enforce the law, especially as Sky itself offers its own soft-gaming services through its bookmaker, Sky Bet, which it insists will not be affected by the new policy.

Interactive TV has become part of mainstream TV but so far the government has not introduced new legislation that will bring the regulation of this burgeoning sector into the 21st century.

Interactive gaming and gambling was meant to be addressed in the gambling bill, which was launched with much fanfare last year. However, the government has now admitted that this bill is being split up so the much-needed legislation is expected to be delayed by up to a year. Kavanagh admits that any further delay will be bad for the industry, particularly with broadcasters and bookmakers launching gaming and gambling services almost on a daily basis on the Sky digital platform.

The fact that there is so much uncertainty about what is and isn't allowed, means that this issue isn't going to go away until the much-needed new laws are introduced. Until then operators of gaming and gambling services on the Sky platform will continue to try to push both the technology and regulatory boundaries. Until it is challenged in a court it looks as if Sky will enforce its hardline stance - a move that will have an impact not only on the industry but also on the hundreds of thousands of TV viewers.