A week before the UK chose its new Prime Minister, Euromat delegates from across Europe gathered in Berlin to confirm Jason Frost as the trade body’s new president.

 

The Annual General Meeting of the European Gaming and Amusement Federation, held on 2 June, confirmed Jason Frost as its next President serving a two-year term.

This came a day after the Euromat Gaming Summit, which accommodated over 400 delegates from across the continent and saw a number of different panels discuss hot topics such as ‘Innovation in the AGC Market’ and ‘Alternative payment systems’ – the latter of which Jason Frost will lobby heavily for during his presidency.

“We’re moving towards becoming a cashless society and yet this fact seems to be ignored by regulators. I’m making a call today to the European regulatory community to get round the table with us and help us to find a way forward together,” said Frost at the event. “Like any other business we need to be able to offer electronic payment and payback as well as cash. It is better for business but also better for the player who will find it easier to pre-commit, setting limits on spend and time. Regulators understand the value of this in the online market and with our existing ability to monitor our players they should realise how valuable this can be for social responsibility. It’s a win-win.”

Other aims Frost would like to see progress over the next two years include lobbying harder in Europe, increasing awareness of Euromat’s activity, creating an information hub, and increasing membership.

“One of the things I would like to do is meet with the regulators in Europe, because the regulators have a meeting called the Gambling Regulators European Forum (GREF), and my intention will be in the future to try and go around and meet all those regulators and basically lobby harder on a European level,” Frost explained to Coinslot. “I also want to increase awareness of the effect of this lobbying, a lot of the time trade bodies stop things happening, and so for operators things will seem to stay the same.”

One “success story” of Euromat that Frost highlighted was its successful lobbying on the latest anti-money laundering directive, which went on to exclude low stake gambling in the UK, Holland and Germany at a time when Frost was president of Bacta.

“Euromat made it easier for Bacta to lobby to insist that it was low risk, because once the European parliament had agreed it was low risk, then the countries couldn’t really go against that,” he said. “The reason the European parliament agreed was because of the lobbying work Euromat have done. So I think that’s one of the success stories.”

Ideas for increasing awareness of such feats include hosting a reception at major European shows, which Frost also hopes will assist in growing member numbers for the trade body, particularly corporate membership.

“I’m going to make it one of my aims over the next two years to bring in as many new members as we can, so Euromat have more in the coffers and so that we can do more with it to better the industry Europe-wide,” Frost concluded.