News – Letter from the President
AGE Lagos 2026 Recap
IGSA was invited to participate and speak at the African Gaming Expo for the third year in a row.
Iwas honored to represent our association and give my presentation, entitled “Frontier to Engine of Growth: Transforming Africa into a Powerhouse through Efficient Regulation and Compliance.” It was great to be able to speak with so many regulators from the African continent and to hear how IGSA Standards are being implemented and the value they are delivering!
GSA Africa is Open!
Directly after the end of the AGE conference, IGSA hosted a GSA Africa opening inauguration cocktail reception. We had over thirty regulators from the continent attend, including Mr. Bashir Are, CEO of the Lagos State Lotteries and Gaming Authority (right front), whose advice and assistance was invaluable in the founding of GSA Africa.
Unfortunately, GSA Africa’s Managing Director, Mr. F.K. Fayad, was unable to get a flight out of Dubai due to the conflict there, and therefore unable was to attend. I was proud to read Mr. Fayad’s prepared remarks on his behalf and to raise a toast to celebrate the expansion of IGSA on the African continent. I look forward to following up on the many conversations I had with those in attendance.
Responsible Gaming Committee Relaunch
I am very excited to be restarting the Responsible Gaming Committee. I would like to welcome IGSA’s newest Partner organizations, the Responsible Gaming Council and Focal Research, as members of this committee alongside representatives from several IGSA Members. I look forward to working with this committee’s members to A) potentially rename the committee, B) identify key goals and objectives and C) to work alongside the committee members to start executing on those plans.
COMMITTEE UPDATES
CYBER RESILIENCY
The Cyber Resiliency Committee last met on March 26. The group is currently debating several newly proposed best practices and discussing the most recent news in security issues. The group’s next meeting date is April 16.
EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES
The IGSA board recently appointed Earle Hall, of Axes.ai, as the new chair for the committee! He’ll be relaunching with a new focus on April 9. Eligible members wishing to participate should send a request to michelleo@igsa.org to obtain the zoom call info!
ETHICAL AI
The committee will meet again in April and finish working on the Best Practices identified as needed during the creation of the FAQ document.
GAMING DEVICE STANDARD (GDS)
Calling all former and interested GDS Committee participants! We are looking to restart this committee to work firstly on creating an updated Toolkit, and then to identify areas within the protocol that may need to be updated. If you are interested in participating, please email michelleo@igsa.org for more information!
PAYMENTS
The Payments Committee has now spawned two Working Groups, with one focusing on KYC 2.0 and the other working on Crypto Exchanges. There is a lot going on in this committee, which continues to attract new members. The next meeting is scheduled for April 8.
RESPONSIBLE GAMING
After some unforeseen delays, this committee is ready to be relaunched! We are incredibly excited to have two new Canadian Partner Members joining this committee. They are the Responsible Gambling Council based in Ontario, and Focal Research, based in Nova Scotia. These two new Members, along with a handful of existing Members, will meet in April to identify key objectives.
REGULATORY
The Regulatory Committee recently met on March 10. Regulators who wish to participate in this committee should send a request to be added to michelleo@igsa.org. This committee is open only to regulators and there are no membership requirements and no dues.
TRANSPORT
IGSA has received a request from the Regulatory Committee to look at updating the transport protocol used by G2S and S2S. SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) has been the preferred transport for these Standards. However, this protocol is now old and deprecated from many systems, making supporting it more difficult. Several years ago, an effort was undertaken to enhance the Transport Standard to also utilize Windows Sockets. We are looking to relaunch this committee to look at the Windows Sockets implementation, and to update it to current Standards, allowing G2S and S2S to run over this protocol. If you were a past member of the Transport Committee or are interested in participating in this work, please contact Michelle or Mark.
Eligible Members wishing to participate in any committees should send a request to michelleo@igsa.org.
UPCOMING IGSA & INDUSTRY EVENTS
- Board of Directors Meeting – April 21
- Cyber Resiliency Committee Meeting – April 16
- Ethical AI Committee Meeting – April TBD
- Emerging Technologies Committee Meeting – April 9
- Payments Committee Meeting – April 8
- Regulatory Committee Meeting – April TBD
- iGX (London, UK) – June 17 – 18, 2026
- G2E (Las Vegas, NV) – September 28 – October 1, 2026
- SiGMA World (Rome, Italy) – November 2 – 5, 2026
- GSATS 2026 (Dates/Location TBD)
- ICE 2027 (Barcelona, Spain) – January 18 – 20, 2027
Underlined non-IGSA events indicate that IGSA personnel will be attending / speaking at the event.
Stay connected to IGSA – subscribe to our mailing list for updates.
Subscribe for updates, news, events, and community resources
