It is the most senior civil servant role in the gambling arena, and the most important bureaucratic office for the industry. But Emma Floyd, a highly skilled civil servant, has been thrown into the most febrile political territorial zone without the life-saving paddle of key experience of the industry she will serve. Floyd follows a long line of officials handed the gambling mantle without the knowledge, but encouragingly, she fully gets the need for balance. And boy is she going to need it when she starts dealing with the Gambling Commission.
DCMS has named Emma Floyd as its new director of sport and gambling, with the civil servant joining the department this month after a career spent predominantly in the energy and sustainability sectors.
Floyd replaces outgoing director Ben Dean as he moves to a position in the Cabinet, and despite a lack of industry experience, she expressed her intention to “get the balance right” between growth and regulation.
“I’m looking forward to getting under the skin of the issues, working with colleagues across DCMS and wider government, and building strong relationships with the organisations and bodies that are central to how the sector operates – and across the sector more broadly to deliver in practice,” said Floyd.
She opened her term with a brutally honest admission, but it’s one that might earn Floyd some breathing space, not least with her well received references to growth and development.
“It’s a new sector for me, but one I’m excited to get stuck into,” she noted. “Sport and gambling sit right at the intersection of growth, regulation and public trust – and they matter a lot to people, communities and everyday life across the country. There’s a real opportunity to get that balance right.”
A balancing act
Just how imbalanced the landscape is might well be a heavy punch to Floyd so soon after the bell rings for round 1.
Restoring balance with a regulatory bully of heavyweight class in the shape of the Gambling Commission will be a major fight for the top civil servant.
Reporting on the appointment, SBC News agreed. It observed that Floyd arrives “at perhaps the most politically hostile environment that the sector has seen in recent years.”
“She will undoubtedly be caught in the crossfire between the industry and reform proponents, with both sides currently at each other’s throats over the state of gambling marketing in the UK.”
Although a civil servant, she may well have to fire some warning shots of her own. The Gambling Commission is the most anti-growth regulator in the British regulatory order – it’s the Opus Dei of regulation. And it has spent two decades tying up the industry so tightly with red tape that it has strangled growth and innovation out of the UK economy.
Some may well enjoy that kind of thing, but in the business environment it has served to suppress confidence, not least because the Commission considers itself answerable to none.
GamCom commands little confidence, nor respect, from the industry, the politicians, the local authorities, and the public.
In fact, the only sector that likes the Commission currently is the illegal gambling market – they absolutely love ‘em because under the Gambling Commission’s watch, they have thrived and grown beyond compare to pre-Commission days.
Floyd says she wants to get stuck in, well get your jackboots on, because you’ve got your work cut out getting any concession on growth and balance from the Gambling Commission in its current format.
Up for the fight
Emma Floyd said……. “Sport and gambling sit right at the intersection of growth, regulation and public trust – and they matter a lot to people, communities and everyday life across the country. There’s a real opportunity to get that balance right……
