June President’s Message

I am sending you this President’s message three months in advance of our 2019 autumn conference in Munich.

The Munich conference committee is in the midst of their plans for the organisation of this conference, but more about that later in this message.

The last couple of months have been an extremely busy period for the IMGL.  First, I am pleased to announce that IMGL has entered into a global partnership arrangement with Clarion Gaming which will involve IMGL providing legal and regulatory content at Clarion Gaming events, including the World Regulatory Briefing (WrB) at ICE London in February.  The first Clarion Gaming events that have taken place under this partnership are the Japan Gaming Conference (JGC) and ICE North America.  IMGL member, Hitoshi Ishihara, has represented IMGL through his participation at the JGC, while IMGL member, Marc Ellinger amongst other members from North America, represented IMGL at the ICE North America conference.  Our arrangement with Clarion Gaming will enable other IMGL members to participate at Clarion Gaming conferences globally, including at ICE, iGB Live! and ICE Africa.  For further information, please contact IMGL Interim Executive Director, Brien Van Dyke at brien@imgl.org.

Also, a number of IMGL members including Joerg Hofman, Birgitte Sand and Morten Ronde participated at the Vilinius event at Mare Balticum which took place on 9 May.  This was the first of many IMGL Masterclasses that will be taking place in Europe in the course of 2019.  The next IMGL Masterclasses will be taking place at the NCLGS Summer meeting in Minneapolis from 12-14 July and iGB Live! from 16-19 July in Amsterdam. If you are interested in participating, please contact either Brien Van Dyke or Morten Ronde (morten@imgl.org).

As mentioned above, the Munich conference committee is taking extensive steps to finalise the conference programme. We are pleased to announce that Harald Neumann, CEO of Novomatic, one of the largest integrated conglomerates of the international gaming industry, will make the keynote presentation. The conference will also incorporate a variety of panels relating to some of the key topics of relevance to the gambling sector in Europe and globally, as well as a number of discussion groups.

Please see the conference page on our website at www.imgl.org. However, if you are interested in participating in any of the panels or discussion groups, I would encourage you to contact Wulf Humbach direct.

The social functions have now also been confirmed.  The Gala Dinner will be taking place at BMW World – Bavarie, while the closing reception will take place in the roof top garden at Hotel Bayerishcher Hof, which will present attendees with one of the best views overlooking the city of Munich.

Also, the Younger Members committee are putting together a variety of events for the interest of younger attendees.  Details will be available on the Munich conference page on the website soon.

Indeed, we encourage you to visit the conference page on a regular basis.   Special pricing will be announced soon for younger attendees and regulators, as well as for attendees from firms with multiple attendees.  These are in addition to the early bird rates, which end August 1.  For further details, all inquiries should be directed to Brien Van Dyke at brien@imgl.org.

The Munich conference will also be the venue of a number of meetings of IMGL committees.  The committees who will be meeting will be the Educators Committee, the Younger Members Committee, the Publications Committee and the Executive Committee.

If there are any topics of interest which you would like to see covered, or if indeed, you would like to meet up with members of those committees, please let me know.

Of particular importance is the IMGL General Members Meeting to take place on the afternoon of 11 September.  At that meeting, the various positions on the Executive Committee for 2020 will be elected.  I am pleased that Past President Heidi Staudenmaier has agreed to chair the nominations committee which comprises a number of active IMGL members in Europe and North America.

If you are interested in participating on the Executive Committee in 2020, please contact Heidi direct.  Otherwise, please pass on comments on the email to the Nominations Committee at brien@imgl.org.  Expect to receive a call from a member of the Nominations Committee to hear your views.

Finally, I confirm that the Athens conference committee has commenced planning for the Athens conference to take place in April 2020 from 1-3 April 2020.  This committee, which is being chaired by Mike Zatezalo and Constantinos Couccoullis, is giving consideration to both the social events that will be held, as well as the subject matter of the conference.  If you would like to participate, please send details to athens@imgl.org.

I am looking forward to seeing you all at one or more of IMGL’s upcoming events, including our receptions at G2E and ICE.  Further details will be posted on the website soon.

In the meantime, best wishes to those of you in the Northern Hemisphere for a great summer and, for those in the Southern hemisphere, for a winter that is not too brisk.

Best wishes!