Meeting the man behind Altenar: an honest broker

As I drove to my interview with the director of Altenar Ltd, I was apprehensive: would Dinos Stranomitis give me the cold shoulder? Would he, as an operator in the gaming industry, hate it if I brought up the issue of responsible gambling?

What I found, in fact, was a welcoming smile and a refreshing honesty and openness that is not the norm for operators in the online gaming and gambling business when sitting across a journalist with a recorder on.

Stranomitis exudes confidence and an innate knowledge of the industry he has dedicated himself – and his family – to. Yes, his moved his family to Malta when he set up Altenar and he insists that he, his wife and children are very happy here.

As his name suggests, he was born and raised in Greece, but he feels international, as he has been away from his home country for so long. And this leads him to comment on how Greece and Germany have been acting like fire and ice in the past few years.

“I think Germans have an appetite to synchronise Europe, which in the long run is the right idea. But I remember in the 90s, we used to believe that Europe was not going fast, it was a nice idea but not many things were happening,” he said.

“After the common currency was introduced, and in the last 10 years, on the other hand, I feel Europe goes too fast, faster than we can afford, and the driver for that is Germany.”

He said that – technically speaking – the ideas may be correct, but politically speaking, things are going too fast.

“We in Greece do not feel European yet and we are not alone. If you ask a Maltese person, he will tell you he feels Maltese, not European, the same in Italy and Helsinki and everywhere else.”

Stranomitis said if one looks at the US, it took over 200 years for people there to start seeing themselves as Americans, and not residents of a particular state, or as coming from the north or south.

“And in those 200 years, they even had a civil war to settle the issue,” he adds.

But we soon get down to business, and the first issue I bring up is Brexit, Britain’s decision to leave the EU, and how that could affect Malta’s gaming industry.

“If you’re asking what Brexit could mean to Malta, I would say that many operators currently situated in Gibraltar – like William Hill, Bet365, Ladbrokes – most of them, they target Europe, and I think this could be a very good opportunity for Malta to get them here,” he said.

Stranomitis said he considers Malta the most friendly jurisdiction in Europe for gaming companies, because of the language and the tax incentives the country offers.

“And Malta is an international environment,” he says, criticising anyone who accuses the Maltese of discrimination against foreigners.

“It’s quite the contrary, the Maltese don’t know what it is to discriminate,” he said. 

He said Malta is a very nice place for foreigners to come to work.

“Malta has designed a good business regime, and I don’t see many other countries doing the same.”

“Europe needs a united thinking on the gaming industry, and I would dare to say that I think Malta has the best concept for gaming law,” he said.

“If the European Union were to accept this and use Malta’s system as a foundation to synchronise the other countries, it would be best.”

He said that many countries refused,  or were reluctant, to legalise gambling because they considered to be like a drug, and that it would have to be treated at some point.

“But I dare to say that gaming or betting are less addictive than smoking, for the simple reason that you can quit betting easier than you can quit smoking,” he said.

Stranomitis said it was ironic that in most countries you could simply walk into a shop and buy a packet of cigarettes for some Euros, wheras it still very difficult to find places where to bet.

I ask him why he thinks there is such discrimination against betting, and his answer is quick and to the point.

“For the simple reason that it can be more expensive. And then the governments will want to control it to make money from it.”

He acknowledges that controlling this addiction is of the utmost importance and that this concept of responsible gaming or responsible addiction was critical to the industry.

“If you want to promote responsible gaming, there are some simple rules you can implement,” he said.

The first and most simple rule, Stranomitis said, is for the operator to be responsible for the player. 

Every operator in the online gaming industry is already obliged to get the identity of the clients.

“If we, or the European Union, were to introduce a rule that the operator is not allowed to collect more than 25% of the tax declaration of the user, we would have already responsible gaming,” Stranomitis said. “20% or 25%, the number is not important.”

He said that, when asking the clients to submit his passport or utility bill, the operator should also ask him for a tax declaration.

“And as soon as the client reaches 20% of the tax declaration, stop him, just stop him from being able to play or place any more bets. And if you don’t block him, the client would entitled to a refund.”

This idea of responsible gaming is possibly one of the most critical issues the industry is facing at the moment and could very well define its very future.

And Stranomitis is passionate about it too, one of not too many operators who realise that the industry needs to regulate itself if more jurisdictions are to be convinced of the social – as well as economic – viability of the sector.

“I do not see any other way, apart from the fact that the relationship between the operator and the consumer needs to be fair,” he said.

For a moment, I thought I misunderstood. An operator in the gambling and betting business was saying this? Then, as if he could read my mind, Stranomitis repeated it.

“Yes it’s difficult, but it’s the only way, the relationship between the operator and the client has to be fair, and this is where the regulator should pay attention: to ensure that the operator is fair.”

He said that, at the moment, governments seemed interested only in collecting their taxes, although he admits that Malta is actually not the worst case by a mile.

“Actually, I think Malta is getting closer to what I described,” he said.

At the moment, efforts by countries or jurisdictions to promote responsible gaming – including Malta through the Malta Gaming Authority – revolve around a number of common initiatives, such as giving the client the ability to set spending limits and to quit playing at any time, among others.

These regulations, although a positive effort in themselves, have one simply yet very serious flaw: the client hismelf sets the limits on his gaming and betting.

But what Stranomitis was suggesting was radically different. Could it actually work? Placing the onus of the responsibility squarely in the hands of the operator would give the operator an additional incentive to ensure that clients did not go over established thresholds. 

“You cannot have an addicted person regulate himself, it is not possible,” insists Stranomitis.

He said that companies where nowadays training staff to recognise addicted players, as opposed to those that simply play for fun.

“The issue is, betting is for fun. You can bet a small amount of money, and you can have a couple of hours’ worth of entertainment, that’s it.”

As I got ready to leave, I extracted a promise from Dinos that we would meet again. I wanted to sit down with him again and pick his brain further. I know for sure I need to find out more about the awesome profit maximization tools his company is making available to their clients. And yes, I really need to see what he thinks of the EU’s efforts to ty and streamline regulations for the gaming sector.

On further reflection, I saw it for what it rally is. That was no mere gaming operator I met that day in Sliema; Dinos Stranomitis is a businessman, granted. But he is so much more.

His vision of the future for this industry in general, and what it could mean for Malta in particular, is astonishing. He struck me as an honest broker in a sector that is very often – and not necessarily unfairly –maligned and frowned upon by many in the media and society.

I want to hear what else Dinos Stranomitis has to say.

I just hope that others will listen too.