By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

Web shop gaming operators are already being approached to joint venture with foreign companies in overseas jurisdictions, a well-known QC suggesting the sector can be “a major Bahamian export”.

Alfred Sears, attorney for the Gaming House Operators Association, told Tribune Business that the process to ‘legalise’ the industry had also sparked requests for regulatory assistance by other countries.

He explained that the tender process, and subsequent web shop licensing, would make it easier for Bahamian web shops to expand into other Caribbean territories because their ‘legal status’ would give extra comfort to regulators there.

Suggesting that ‘legalisation’ would create an opportunity to export Bahamian intellectual property and related technology know-how, Mr Sears told Tribune Business: “I think this is an opportunity for Bahamians who clearly have entrepreneurial ingenuity, and capacity in this domestic market.

“I think it’s a Bahamian-owned industry that can be a major exporter of the expertise this sector has developed over the years.

“Other jurisdictions, not only are they making inquiries of the regulator [Gaming Board] to assist them from a regulatory standpoint, but the operators themselves are being approached by persons looking to joint venture with them in other jurisdictions because of the successful entrepreneurial creativity and innovation in gaming that the industry has manifested,” he added.

“I think it’s a great entrepreneurial opportunity for Bahamians to become regional and international players within the global entertainment industry.”

Bahamian web shop operators had already begun to expand into the Caribbean prior to the Gaming Act’s passage and the licence tender process’s start.

Craig Flowers’ FML Group of Companies, for example, has already moved into Haiti, while other operators have signalled their intention to target nations such as the Dominican Republic.

Such expansions will now likely be eased, and accelerated, by the Bahamian ‘legalisation’ process, which brings web shop gaming and the millions in generates into the formal, mainstream economy.

Mr Sears said that with the sector now regulated by the Gaming Board, and taxed, overseas regulators will be better able to conduct due diligence on any Bahamian web shop operator wanting to enter their jurisdiction.

“The process has been very, very significant in providing the industry with the kind of platform to facilitate the future growth and expansion of the industry,” the former attorney general said, “and to facilitate the ability to reach outside the Bahamas, because once regulated here, it’s easier to do business in another regulated jurisdiction and go in there.

“There is due diligence assistance available, and it makes it easier for another regulator to receive a Bahamian operator in another jurisdiction.”

Mr Sears said web shops should be treated as part of the global entertainment industry, because gaming was “an integral part” of the hospitality sector.