Pink Elephants

What is Pink Elephants?

Black Cube, an intelligence firm hired by Playtech in 2020 to look into alleged illegal behaviour at its rival Evolution, released a divisive report into Evolution’s actions. Evolution denied and refuted much of its findings.

Evolution then commissioned Spectrum Gaming Group to produce a report on its actions and the validity of the Black Cube report. Produced in 2022, the report has long been subject to confidentiality despite Evolution claiming the report exonerated the company.

Playtech on Wednesday published a statement highlighting what it claimed were compliance failures at Evolution, written into the Spectrum report.

What is Pink Elephants?

In an April interview with iGB, Sher reflected on the challenges of regulatory uncertainty in Mexico

“Right now we are working based on a framework of laws which you cannot even call regulation, from 1947,” Sher said. “So it’s very hard to work long-term and to give long-term commitments. While the future is unclear in terms of regulation, we saw what happened in other countries in LatAm when they changed the regulation every other month.

“In Mexico, I think we are stable, we know how to deal with this market. Of course, we will be very happy if in the future, a proper regulatory framework will be introduced and not the way that we are working right now.”  

What is Pink Elephants?

This requirement raised concerns among operators worried that the barriers to entry could have become more restrictive, But at a meeting on the policies last year the regulator assured licensees it was not enforcing a specific strict rule on this.

Speaking to iGB at the time, Bjorn Fuchs, chairman of VNLOK Fuchs noted “there was a sigh of relief going through the room when it was presented”.

Rather than a crackdown across the board, what emerged was a more regulated renewal framework.