As global iGaming markets mature, CFOs are operating under intensifying financial pressure, including rising taxes, compliance costs and fragmented regulatory frameworks.
From Europe’s heavier fiscal regimes to emerging regulations across the Americas, these are reshaping how companies allocate capital, assess risk and plan for growth.
In the latest iGaming Expert roundtable, Marcus Arildsson, CFO at Codere Online, Vasilena Mantsiou, CFO at Evoplay, and Motti Gil, CFO at RubyPlay, examine the new financial priorities shaping the sector and how businesses can adapt their strategies to succeed.
iGaming Expert: How are today’s tax and regulatory regimes reshaping CFO priorities in terms of capital allocation, operating costs, and financial planning?
Marcus Arildsson: Today’s regulatory legislations are fundamentally reshaping the role from a traditional financial steward into a strategic architect of resilience and growth.
Across established European markets such as Spain and Italy, heavier fiscal burdens, tighter advertising restrictions and increasingly prescriptive responsible gaming frameworks are compressing margins and raising the structural cost of doing business.
At the same time, emerging territories across Latin America, particularly in Mexico and Argentina, are creating a more complex patchwork of licensing, taxation and compliance requirements.
In this environment, decisions must be more disciplined and selective than in previous growth cycles. The emphasis has shifted away from expansion at all costs toward sustainable, market-level profitability under conservative regulatory assumptions.
Compliance costs, once viewed as incremental friction, are now a structural component of the operating model. Investments in scalable technology, reporting automation and centralised risk management have become essential tools to protect margin and ensure long-term viability.
Vasilena Mantsiou: First, changes in tax and regulation are forcing us to rethink how we allocate capital. Our priority is to balance growth with real, after-tax profitability. That means putting money into transparent jurisdictions with stronger net returns and into projects that can deliver a faster ROI.
Compliance has also turned into one of the biggest operating expenses. Meeting KYC/AML, responsible gaming, and reporting requirements takes constant investment in both people and technology, especially since tax rules differ from market to market. Today, compliance isn’t just an overhead cost – it’s a critical part of protecting our licences and our brand.
Finally, in some jurisdictions, ongoing regulatory uncertainty is making long-term planning more challenging. We are building greater flexibility into our financial models and maintaining buffers to absorb sudden regulatory or tax changes.
Motti Gil: The era of ‘growth at all costs’ has been definitively replaced by a focus on ‘efficient growth,’ primarily because the cost of doing business has fundamentally changed.
As a CFO, my financial planning is no longer just about commercial margins, it highlights the difference between the theoretical profit a deal generates and the actual cash the company keeps after navigating the complex rules of regulated markets and taxation.
We are navigating a multi-layered tax environment that demands sophisticated management and higher capital allocation for compliance infrastructure rather than just marketing.
First, we must account for the specific gaming taxes on activity, which vary materially from jurisdiction to jurisdiction and directly impact the bottom line. But the complexity deepens with indirect taxes like VAT, GST or PIS/COFINS in Brazil.
These often require real-time reporting and significant technical infrastructure to track the location of the player versus the supplier, turning tax compliance into a technical challenge. Furthermore, as a B2B supplier operating globally, tax withholding on IP licensing and royalties have become a critical consideration in our cash flow planning, to avoid double taxation leakage.
The compliance burden has also moved into the realm of transfer pricing. With teams and assets spread across borders, maintaining updated transfer pricing studies to justify the ‘arm’s length’ nature of intercompany transactions is a non-negotiable operational cost.
Finally, the OECD’s Pillar 2 (Global Minimum Tax) initiative is setting a new baseline. Even for companies below the revenue threshold, the ‘trickle-down’ effect means we must build financial data systems that are Pillar 2-ready, ensuring we can report on a jurisdictional level with granular accuracy.
iGX: As market fragmentation increases across iGaming, what are the trade-offs you see in pursuing M&A, and how should businesses be evaluating risk vs reward in this area?
VM: The main trade-off in today’s fragmented iGaming market is faster expansion versus higher regulatory and operational complexity. M&A can get you into new jurisdictions much faster than building from scratch.
Acquiring a licensed business with an existing customer base can save years of work and create real synergies, from shared technology and lower operating costs to better cross-selling opportunities and broader market diversification.
But that speed comes at a price. You are not just buying a business, you are taking on different regulatory, tax, and compliance frameworks. There is also the risk of unpleasant surprises, such as ongoing investigations, hidden tax liabilities, or tougher capital and liquidity requirements. All of these can quickly change the economics of a deal and tie up cash after closing.
That is why companies need to look beyond past performance and box-ticking compliance. It is just as important to understand how taxes and regulations will affect the combined business going forward. A clear post-merger plan for governance and compliance, with centralised reporting where it makes sense and strong local oversight where it is needed, is essential to make sure the reward really outweighs the risk.
MG: As market fragmentation increases, the cost of organic entry rises steeply. Entering a new market today requires a license, adjusting and maintaining the tech-stack to local requirements, and often a physical presence.
Consequently, M&A becomes an attractive lever for speed – buying a local entity can shave 12 to 18 months off a market entry timeline. However, in a fragmented regulatory world, the due diligence process must fundamentally change. We can no longer simply look at a target’s top-line revenue or EBITDA; we must deeply audit their historical compliance with local regulation and taxation.
The sheer weight of localised regulatory requirements – unique technical certifications, tax reporting standards, and responsible gaming tools for every single jurisdiction – creates a massive operational overhead and enhances consolidation.
Smaller operators simply cannot sustain these rising fixed costs alone; they require economies of scale to survive. Consequently, we are seeing M&A used as a tool to spread these high compliance costs across a wider revenue base.
Businesses should evaluate the reward not just by immediate cash flow, but by the value of the infrastructure. Are we buying a volatile customer base, or are we buying a clean license, good standing, and certified tech?
In highly fragmented markets like Latin America or parts of the US, paying a premium for a clean, licensed infrastructure is often worth far more than paying for a revenue stream that might evaporate under strict regulatory scrutiny.
MA: As fragmentation increases, acquisitions can accelerate market entry and provide access to licences that could otherwise not be available, as well as infrastructure and local expertise, but they also introduce regulatory liabilities and integration risks that need to be carefully managed.
Strategic considerations should not only focus on scale, but about the long-term durability of the business within a given regulatory framework. Organic growth in stable, well-regulated markets can often generate more predictable long-term returns than aggressive expansion through M&A into jurisdictions where regulatory or tax frameworks remain uncertain.
iGX: What regulatory or fiscal developments are you watching most closely across different regions, and how should iGaming suppliers and operators adapt their financial strategies accordingly?
MG: We at Rubyplay, constantly following the U.S., the development we are anticipating most eagerly is the legislation of additional US states for online casino. While sports betting has proliferated, iGaming has lagged; however, as states increasingly seek new tax revenues to overcome budget deficits, we expect a second wave of regulation.
This presents a massive opportunity, but one that requires significant capital readiness to handle high state-specific licensing fees and varying tax rates.
Simultaneously, in Latin America, we are closely watching Argentina, specifically the introduction and expansion of state-level (provincial) regulatory regimes. Argentinian regulation is not a single blanket but a province-by-province framework (such as in Buenos Aires).
This mirrors the complexity of the U.S. market but within a distinct LatAm context, where currency controls, exchange rate fluctuations and inflation add further layers of financial complexity.
In addition, Brazil is a focus market for Rubyplay, where we have analysed the complex tax regime, which includes gaming taxes, indirect taxes, direct taxes and withholding obligations, and structured our operations accordingly. We continue to monitor developments in this market, from changes in gaming taxation to anticipated adjustments in direct and indirect taxes.
To adapt, suppliers and operators must shift their financial strategies away from broad regional budgets. We cannot view LatAm or North America as a unified market. We need to allocate capital and compliance resources specifically to high-value provinces or states.
Our transfer pricing models and tax reporting engines must be agile enough to handle multiple distinct fiscal environments within the same national border. The winning strategy is to treat compliance not as a burden, but as a competitive advantage – if we can enter a regulated state faster and cleaner than our competitors, that is a tangible value driver for our partners and shareholders.
MA: Regionally, Europe remains an area of fiscal tightening and heightened consumer protection, demanding operational efficiency and ability to quickly adapt, and the recent developments in the UK are a good example that even the most mature iGaming markets can be subject to significant regulatory changes.
Latin America continues to present structural growth opportunities, yet with evolving regulatory frameworks that require flexibility in capital deployment and cautious balance sheet management. Given our presence within the region, Mexico and Colombia remain the key countries where we are watching closely regulatory and fiscal developments.
In the former, a significant tax increase was implemented this year while there have also been discussions about a potential new gaming law which would replace the current one from 1947, and which could, in our view, address some of the issues we are seeing in the digital space and help level the playing field between compliant and non-compliant operators.
In Colombia, which we think has the fundamentals to develop into an attractive igaming market, we are closely monitoring fiscal developments since the 19% tax on deposits introduced last year expired in December.
So far in 2026, we have already seen several initiatives from the Colombian government trying to reintroduce a gaming tax. Additionally, we understand that general elections will take place before summer, which may also impact the Colombian sector.
Ultimately, I think it is advisable for operators to no longer see regulation as an external factor but rather as a core driver of financial strategy that should be managed proactively. The modern CFO must aim to integrate regulatory intelligence, capital discipline and risk into major decisions.
VM: What we are watching most closely is how regulation is becoming both stricter and more expensive to operate under, especially in Europe and in emerging markets. Ongoing discussions around tax harmonisation will continue to affect where groups place their entities and how they structure deals, adding another layer of uncertainty to long-term planning.
In Latin America, the opportunity is huge, but regulation is still uneven. Some jurisdictions, such as Brazil, are moving faster, while others are still catching up. That means financial strategies need to stay flexible, with local structures, local partners, and enough buffer for rules that can change quickly.
In Canada, the system is built around strong provincial control combined with federal tax rules. Ontario is setting the pace inside the country, and others may follow, so suppliers and operators need clean structures and scalable compliance setups that can work province by province.
In simple terms, the common theme is the same everywhere: build financial models that assume higher compliance costs, stay flexible, and be ready to adapt quickly as regulation and tax rules keep shifting.
