Regulation, realism and the long view: Lee Hills on the future of iGaming
At this year’s ICE Barcelona, much of the conversation centred on growth. New markets, new technologies and new opportunities continue to dominate panel stages and exhibition floors. Yet behind the optimism, a quieter debate is taking shape across the industry: How sustainable is growth when regulation, taxation and compliance pressure continue to intensify?
For Lee Hills, CEO of Solutions Hub, this question is not theoretical. Having spent most of his career working across corporate service provision and gaming regulation, Hills has witnessed multiple regulatory cycles play out across jurisdictions. His perspective is shaped less by ideology and more by pattern recognition.
“If you want to forecast the future, you look at the past,” he said during his exclusive interview with SiGMA News at this year’s ICE.
Hills’ first foray into iGaming started at the age of just 23. What captured his interest was not so much the product, but the regulatory complexity behind it. That fascination eventually led him to establish Solutions Hub in 2016, a business built around licensing, compliance and regulatory strategy across gaming and fintech.
Over the years, that experience has given him a front row seat to how regulation evolves when industries grow quickly.
When regulation and enforcement fall out of sync
Hills draws parallels between historical prohibition models and what he describes as “prohibition by attrition” in mature gambling markets such as the UK. The term does not suggest deliberate punishment, but rather the cumulative effect of layered policy changes introduced over a short period of time.
“There isn’t anyone sitting there saying let’s penalise operators because they have done something wrong,” he said. “But when advertising restrictions, tax increases, and compliance obligations all converge at once, the commercial reality becomes very difficult.”
The core issue, Hills argues, is not taxation itself but uneven competition.
“If everyone were on the same playing field, that would be fine,” he said. “But they aren’t.”
Licensed operators face rising costs and tighter restrictions, while unlicensed or lightly regulated competitors operate without the same barriers. In a digital environment with few geographic boundaries, that imbalance becomes increasingly visible to players.
Without effective enforcement against those operating outside regulated frameworks, Hills believes consumer protection objectives can become undermined rather than strengthened.
“You are trying to compete against people you simply cannot compete against,” he said. “And what makes it worse is that players are already moving in their direction.”
The reality behind emerging market ambition
Keeping future of iGaming as the focus, while emerging markets are often presented as the industry’s next growth engine, Hills urged caution against surface-level analysis.
Demographics such as population size and smartphone penetration may look attractive on paper, but they rarely tell the full story.
“Do you really know the jurisdiction beyond some Google searches?” he asked. “Do you understand player behaviour, payments, acquisition methods and how stable the regulatory horizon actually is?”
Using Brazil as an example, Hills noted that many operators rushed in on optimistic projections, only to discover that profitability proved far more complex than anticipated.
Local understanding, he argued, is increasingly essential. Large global brands may still play a role, but future success is likely to favour operators capable of running efficient, localised models rather than uniform global ones.
Why regulated stability is regaining importance
As regulatory scrutiny tightens globally, Hills sees a growing shift away from reliance on broad dotcom models toward more stable, locally regulated revenue bases.
“There is a lot of short-term thinking happening,” he said. “Shifting somewhere because regulation is lighter does not build long-term value.”
From his perspective, regulated markets with clearer frameworks offer greater sustainability, even if headline revenues appear smaller. This thinking influenced Solutions Hub’s decision to establish a physical presence in Ireland.
“We wanted to show commitment,” Hills said. “Not just add another licence offering, but actually be there physically.”
A quieter definition of success
Unlike many firms in the sector, Solutions Hub is not venture capital or private equity-backed. For Hills, that independence allows a different definition of success.
“We do not need explosive growth,” he said. “We just need to be consistent.”
That consistency, he believes, comes from investing in people with real regulatory experience, including former regulators and operational compliance specialists, rather than chasing scale for its own sake.
In an industry often driven by speed and expansion, it is a deliberately measured approach. Yet as regulatory complexity continues to deepen worldwide, that long view may become one of the sector’s most valuable assets.
Join the world’s biggest iGaming community with SiGMA’s Top 10 News countdown. Subscribe HERE for weekly updates, insider insights, and exclusive subscriber-only offers.
