Gene Grand – Navigating Regulatory Complexity: Operating Across Multiple Gaming Jurisdictions

Gene Grand has spent enough time in rooms where a single licensing decision could reshape a market entry timeline to understand what regulatory complexity actually costs. Not in theory, not in a risk register, but in the practical experience of building commercial operations in environments where the rules differ, the enforcement culture differs, and the pace of change differs, often simultaneously.

The challenge for operators in 2026 is not finding markets to enter. It is building the infrastructure to operate across multiple regulatory environments without the compliance function becoming a structural drag on everything else.

What Regulatory Unpredictability Actually Costs

The investors Gene speaks with are consistent on one point: regulatory predictability is their primary concern, and its absence is their primary source of operational risk. Peter Kesitilwe, CEO of the Africa iGaming Alliance, captured the position plainly in his 2026 outlook: investors are most concerned about regulatory unpredictability, with sudden tax changes, licensing delays, fragmented regulatory authority, and inconsistent enforcement practices identified as the key drivers of risk.

That framing matters. It is not that investors avoid regulated markets. It is that they require regulatory environments stable enough to justify the capital commitments those markets demand. Stable regulatory environments are crucial for operators who need consistent policy frameworks to justify significant investments, and rapid regulatory changes disrupt market stability and discourage long-term capital deployment. When the regulatory floor shifts without warning, the business case built on it can unravel quickly.

Gene has seen this play out on both sides. Markets that regulate well, communicate change in advance, and enforce consistently attract serious operators and institutional capital. Markets that regulate reactively, change rules frequently, or enforce selectively tend to attract the operators who are willing to accept that uncertainty in exchange for short-term margin, which is rarely the foundation for a sustainable industry.

“The markets that will define the next decade of gaming growth are the ones that treat regulation as a signal to serious operators, not as a barrier to entry. Those are different things. They require different approaches.”

One Jurisdiction at a Time, or All at Once

There is a structural question every multi-market operator eventually confronts: whether to manage compliance jurisdiction by jurisdiction or to build a unified framework that adapts to local requirements. The answer, in Gene’s experience, is that neither extreme works particularly well.

A fully unified model risks treating markets as interchangeable when they are not. A jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction approach creates duplication, inconsistency, and the kind of key-person dependency that makes an operation fragile when regulatory attention intensifies.

Grant Thornton’s analysis of multi-jurisdiction AML and responsible gambling compliance makes the point precisely: operators holding licences across multiple jurisdictions must ensure their risk assessment methodology identifies the specific risks affiliated to each different jurisdiction, because risks faced in one jurisdiction may not be the same as in another. The practical implication is that a compliance framework needs genuine local calibration, not a template with the country name changed at the top.

For Gene, the operators who manage this well are those who have invested in the infrastructure before they needed it. The cost of building compliance depth in a new market while simultaneously trying to grow commercial operations in that market is significantly higher than building it ahead of entry.

“I’ve watched operators enter markets on the assumption that they can build compliance infrastructure later. Later always arrives faster than they expect, usually at the worst possible moment.”

How Regulators Themselves Are Evolving

The regulatory landscape is not static, and the direction of travel is towards more sophisticated oversight rather than less. The Dutch Gambling Authority, the Kansspelautoriteit, restructured its governance in January 2026 with a new model built around three directorates: player protection, permits and supervision, and digitalisation and data analysis. The regulator said the change was designed to respond to increasing complexity in gambling oversight, driven by technological development, the growth of illegal supply, and more intensive international regulatory cooperation.

That example is instructive for operators across European and other regulated markets. Regulators are not standing still. They are developing the analytical capability to identify compliance gaps at scale, and the enforcement appetite to act on them. An operator whose compliance function was adequate in 2022 may find it insufficient in 2026 not because the rules changed dramatically, but because the regulator’s ability to detect non-compliance improved.

Pontus Lindwall, CEO of Betsson, reflected on this in his 2026 shareholder outlook, describing the strategic shift his business had made towards locally licensed markets precisely to manage compliance and taxes in a sustainable way. That framing, sustainable rather than merely compliant, captures the distinction Gene draws between operators who are managing regulatory risk and those who are simply reacting to it.

Regulatory Sophistication as Competitive Moat

The operators who have spent years building genuine expertise in multi-jurisdiction compliance are now in a position that is difficult for newcomers to replicate quickly. They understand local regulatory culture, not just local regulatory text. They have relationships with the people who make enforcement decisions. They have systems calibrated to the specific risk profiles of each market they operate in.

That depth of knowledge is, in Gene’s view, one of the more durable competitive advantages in this sector. It cannot be bought quickly. It accumulates through presence, through experience, and through the discipline of building compliance infrastructure that actually works rather than infrastructure designed to satisfy the minimum threshold.

“The operators with the deepest regulatory relationships in the most complex markets didn’t get there by accident. They made a decision, years ago, to treat regulatory expertise as a strategic asset. That decision looks prescient now.”