The Tribune

By RASHAD ROLLE

Tribune Staff Reporter

rrolle@tribunemedia.net

THE head of the country’s oldest web shop operation has no plans to lay off workers now that the Gaming Act has come into force.

Instead, Craig Flowers, owner of the FML brand of web shops, said yesterday that his company is now looking to hire people and expand.

Sebas Bastian, the CEO of Island Luck, the nation’s largest web shop operator, acknowledged that his company recently let go 47 employees as the Gaming Act came into force on Monday because their positions were not accounted for in the legislation.

When contacted by The Tribune for comment yesterday, Mr Flowers said: “Mr Bastian had to lay off some people. Well we probably will be hiring those people.”

His comments came a day after lawyer Wayne Munroe told this newspaper he would be surprised if more than 10 web shop companies remain in business by December, with compliance costs covering license fees and tax arrears expected to prove too hefty for many to deal with.

It is believed that more than 200 web shops are in operation in the country, which are run by as many as 30 companies.

Mr Flowers explained yesterday that his business has traditionally taken a conservative approach to the industry over the years, therefore enabling it to grow at a time when other web shops are considering shrinking.

“We are probably the only ones who will be expanding and not be retracting,” he said.    

“We operate in a different category than the other web shops. The industry is related to online gaming and the other sector is ticketing. We’ve never went into the streets and dealt with ticketing because it was an exposure to elements we didn’t want to be involved in. It is something that we will be looking at now. We were the creators of the business that deals with online gaming. FML does not include people on the streets with hand held devices and we don’t have anyone working in that category (which the legislation does not account for). We are not seen in public places around the streets; no part of the streets are we seen dealing with mobile operators.”

Mr Flowers also does not expect the compliance costs associated with the new gaming regime to disrupt his expansion plans.

His statements on the matter came after Mr Munroe told The Tribune that “licensing is going to be a minimum $32,000 for the webshops, without including (fees) for rent, spa and electricity.”

Mr Flowers said: “For FML, we expect to expand, to grow, to broaden our platform, to hire more people. Because we in the past have always been very conservative with the market being unregulated, there were a lot of things FML was not prepared to expose its company and staff to. Other companies were willing to do those things to gain revenue. We were always concerned about what our images were all about and very concerned about what we stood for and we limited ourselves from going into certain places and doing certain things. We now have the option to expand into those areas.”

Last week, Tourism Minister Obie Wilchcombe said web shops that are not granted licences to operate will have seven days to shut down once notices of closure are released.

He added that web shop owners are required to make “full and frank disclosure of revenues generated by their past business operations” by December 1.

Failure to do this will result in them being disqualified from obtaining gaming house operator licences, he said.

He added that operators have until December 8 to lodge sworn affidavits with the secretary of the Gaming Board in which they disclose whether they wish to operate their businesses during the transitional period.

On December 17, the Gaming Board is expected to publish a notice about its intention to issue a request for proposal (RFP) for licences, he said.

The closing date for submitting applications for gaming house operator and gaming house premises licences will be February 20, 2015.

The licensing process should be completed by May 2015.