Interview: Regulating the Game’s Paul Newson on the 2027 RTG Global Awards
IAG: Thanks for speaking with IAG, Paul. You debuted the RTG Global Awards in March of this year. What did the inaugural year tell you?
Paul Newson: That we had read the sector correctly. Nominations came from regulators, operators, suppliers, researchers, clinicians and advisers, and the international spread was stronger than we had any right to expect in a first year. A good number of entries were put forward by someone other than the entrant, which I took as the better signal. People wanted a colleague’s work seen.
The dinner went beyond what we hoped for. It is part of the conference rather than a function bolted onto it, so the room had spent two days on the same problems and understood the scrutiny and the policy dilemmas the sector is working through. Consider who is actually being recognized on that stage. The people hardening operators against financial crime. The people bridging research into safer gambling outcomes. The people confronting the black-market challenges and securing sport and wagering integrity. And the architects of the fun and excitement that guests come for in the first place. Criticism of this industry is easy and there is an abundance of it. Lifting those voices and showing the next generation of leaders what excellence looks like is considerably harder and far less often attempted. That is the work of the awards.
IAG: There is no shortage of awards programs in this industry. What makes these different?
PN: Three things. The first is what we choose to recognize. Most awards in gambling reward commercial performance and that work is already well lit. These recognize regulatory quality, compliance capability, integrity work, harm prevention and research, which are not.
The second is the panel, which sits outside RTG and is deliberately senior. Khalid Ali, who leads the International Betting Integrity Association. Kai Cantwell of Responsible Wagering Australia. Peter Cohen of The Agenda Group. Professor Paul Delfabbro of Adelaide University. Don Hammond of Leagues Clubs Australia. Tracy Parker of Canada’s Responsible Gambling Council. Dan Rule of Endeavour Group. Tess Salmon of Aube Communications. Dan Waugh of Regulus Partners. A high-profile international regulator joins shortly.
The third is the light itself. This work is done under scrutiny, largely out of sight, and the sector has very little habit of acknowledging it. Recognition of that kind is deserved and uncommon. We are trying to make it less uncommon.
IAG: The program has doubled to 12 categories. How did you choose the six additions?
PN: We started from the policy problems rather than from the categories. Governments and regulators in very different jurisdictions are working on a common list: exposure to financial crime, gambling harm, the leakage of activity into illegal markets, the integrity of sport and wagering, and the distance between good research and what actually gets implemented. Operators face the same list from the other side of the table. The question for us was how to bring that work into the fold and give it standing.
The additions are Gambling Harm Prevention Campaign, Research Impact, Sport & Wagering Integrity Initiative, Compliance Advisory, Black Market Disruption Initiative and Distinguished Contribution. They join Leadership Voice, Safer Gambling Champion, Compliance Excellence, RegTech Solution, Community Impact Initiative and Emerging Leader. Extending the field was never about volume. It was about aligning the awards with the areas that need to be elevated and prioritized, as well as with the people who deserve to be rewarded.
IAG: Sport & Wagering Integrity and Black-Market Disruption are two of the more pointed additions. Why those and why now?
PN: Sport & Wagering Integrity is a cornerstone of confidence in this sector. If participants doubt the contest is fair, or customers doubt the market is clean, very little else in the framework holds. A great deal of work goes into strengthening those protections, by integrity units, betting operators, sporting bodies and monitoring agencies, and we hear almost nothing about it or about the people doing it. The category covers monitoring systems, suspicious betting detection, participant education, information sharing and investigative partnerships.
Black market disruption is the harder question, and for jurisdictions that have tightened their settings it may be the defining one. Enforcement, payment and advertising disruption and detection tools all matter, but the harder half of the problem is calibration. A regulated offer has to be attractive enough to keep players inside the perimeter. Push the settings or the tax load too far from what customers actually want and the activity moves outside it, where there are no protections at all. Australia has watched exactly that happen with tobacco excise, and the lesson transfers. Recognizing the initiatives that have found that balance, and understanding how, is worth a great deal to everyone still looking.
IAG: Compliance Advisory is an unusual category. Advisers are more often on the judging side than the entry side.
PN: Which is exactly why it is there. Advisory firms, consultancies and legal practices do a large share of the advice and the practical work of lifting standards, particularly for smaller licensees without deep in-house capability. Control framework design, remediation, independent reviews, risk assessments and assurance work all count, and none of it has had a home in an awards program.
As in any sector, there is a continuum of advisers. The ones who inform persuasively, build capability and give rigorous advice, including the advice a client would prefer not to hear, ought to be visible. This category is also a pilot. We are testing the market and we want to see what presents. What we are asking for is evidence of what changed for the client rather than a description of services offered. A capability statement is not a nomination.
IAG: The awards carry “Global” in the name but the event is in Sydney. How international is the field?
PN: The eligibility rules are worldwide and the entries have followed. There is no requirement to be based in Australia, to attend the conference, or to have any prior connection to RTG. The field runs across operators in betting, wagering, casino, club and pub, technology providers, RegTech and safer gambling suppliers, racing controlling bodies, regulators, individual professionals, researchers and not for profits. Joint submissions are permitted, which suits cross border projects and technology partnerships.
The inaugural year makes the point better than the rules do. The nominations were diverse in both origin and discipline, and one of the six awards left the country. GambleAlert in Nigeria won Safer Gambling Champion. We shipped the trophy, which is a substantial piece of work rather than a molded plaque, and they sent back an unboxing video. That told me the recognition carried well beyond the room it was given in. I would encourage teams internationally to put work forward, including their own. There is no prize for modesty.
IAG: The program now runs from Emerging Leader to Distinguished Contribution. Is that deliberate?
PN: Yes. Judgement in this work is not learned from a rulebook. It is picked up by watching people who exercise it well under pressure, usually in the middle of something difficult, and that only happens if those people are visible. This sector also has a short memory. Hard won lessons get relearned every few years because nobody recorded who solved the problem last time or how they did it.
Emerging Leader recognizes people under 40 who are already shaping practice. Distinguished Contribution recognizes those who have done it for decades. Putting both on the same stage on the same night says something to the people in between and it gives an emerging leader something to aim at. This is a career worth building, not a stop on the way to somewhere else.
IAG: What would make 2027 a success?
PN: Depth of field, first. Twelve categories only earn their place if each draws a real contest and every shortlist could be argued over. It will also be instructive to see where the weight of nominations lands. We are not wedded to 12. If a category does not draw a contest we will retire it, and if the sector’s problems move we will introduce others. Test, adjust, adapt.
Then whether the practice travels with the recognition. If a winning harm prevention campaign or black-market initiative is picked up in another jurisdiction because it was surfaced here, that is worth more than the trophy. Over several years the shortlists should build into a record of what has actually worked, which this sector does not have.
Beyond that, I want the evening to hold what it had in 2026. Reward and recognition matter in a sector where the people doing careful, unglamorous, standards raising work rarely hear that anyone noticed. Nominations are open until 21 December through the awards page at regulatingthegame.com. Finalists are announced on 1 February and the gala dinner is on 9 March at the Sofitel Sydney Wentworth, on the second night of the conference.
