Gaming Intelligence Hot 50

The BGC has recruited its first chief executive in the form of Michael Dugher, who joins from UK Music, where he has been chief executive since stepping down as a Labour party MP in 2017. Dugher was shadow secretary of state for culture, media and sport (the government department responsible for gambling) and is a close associate of Labour’s most vociferous anti-gambling campaigner Tom Watson. That relationship might well be tested. Watson left the House of Commons during 2019 but vowed to continue to fight for gambling reform.

Dugher will have to recruit a team with the wit and imagination to lift the industry’s representation to a whole new level, as the new UK government ponders how it will fulfil its election manifesto promise to revisit the Gambling Act.