Yahaya Maikori: Gaming Is a Parasitic Industry
There is hardly anybody who is somebody in the gaming industry whose path has not crossed with Yahaya Maikori. GAMING WEEK recently had a very revealing session with the enterprising lawyer who knows the gaming industry like the back of his palm
You were active as an entertainment lawyer. How did you get into the gaming industry?
I’m a lawyer by training, an entertainment lawyer. I’m the founder of Law Allianz, which is an entertainment law firm based in Lagos. I got into gaming in 2006/2007. I was acting as a lawyer to some South Africans who had invested in a pension company. After some years of running the pension company, they were exiting, and while exiting, they were looking for what else they could do with their money in Nigeria, so they decided to look into setting up a casino in Abuja, then. As the only lawyer they knew, they basically just said I should help them to get the licence. And that’s how the journey started.
So it started with me trying to secure a license, trying to identify the ideal agency of government to get a casino license from. From then on, we launched a casino, and I started working with them. Thereafter, there were so many people, and I think that was about the time gaming was becoming a bit more popular, especially in South Africa.
We had lots of guys from South Africa, people looking into going into sports betting. And because I was already in the industry anyway, I was that known person to this set of people. The word spread around that there was this gaming lawyer who could help them with their licence, and that is basically how I started in the industry.
Shortly after that, having done lots of work, travelling from Abuja to Lagos to do lots of work – get licences and other stuff like that; that’s when I eventually moved to Lagos to finally settle and get more involved in the industry, advising clients, working with regulators, lots of companies seeking legal opinion on Nigeria. Not just that, again, it can be extended beyond Nigeria to other African countries. So that journey has led me to advise clients across Africa. I think seven or eight other jurisdictions and I also work with a couple of regulators across Africa, as well.
“You have to look at the industry in a converged state. Eight years ago, look at gaming or sports betting or lottery or whatever it is, on its own. But now it is part of the media. Now it is technology. Now it is game development. Now it’s data collection. So you must look at it in a converged state and the value chain has moved significantly, so when it comes to the issue of regulation, you might not even know where to stop or continue.”
You have helped so many of these companies to establish their operations in Nigeria and have also acted as an external consultant to the NLRC. Please talk about these roles.
Normally, when you are starting with an industry, the easiest way to galvanise the industry is through conferences. And I think when ICE started, I was one of the first persons to speak on ICE as an African... on behalf of Africans. So they started creating lots of panels for African speakers, and that’s how that spread, but because there were very few people who started that year, I was the kind of go-to person. There were lots of referrals. Even when they were asking questions about events across Africa, my name kept coming up simply because of the amount of work I have done for several clients. At some point. I think about seven years ago, we held the first Sports Betting West Africa conference in Nigeria, which was the first in Nigeria. And after that, we brought in the National Lottery and many other regulators from across the states to participate.
Thereafter, they called me to know if I would help them look at the structure of the regulatory commission. Also, see how we can insert more vibrancy into the regulatory environment. That’s how I got the call from the National Lottery. After that, I have gone ahead to advise at least seven or eight states in Nigeria. That’s apart from the National Lottery. In short, that’s how the engagement started with the National Lottery, and it went on for quite a while, both officially and unofficially.
Of course, many other people have come into the industry now, but I was one of the first people
to give them advice. Before then, I had encountered the National Lottery, which was when I was in Abuja in 2008/2009 when they were trying to regulate the casino business. We basically worked with the Association of Casino Operators. The industry has moved from then on. We did some work, and we will continue to do this, both officially and unofficially.
Can we understand your involvement at that level as an operator?
At that level, what happened is that things started moving online.
Many state governments did not know how to generate revenue from this industry. That’s where we came on board. We came on board again, not just even helping them in terms of the law or in terms of revenue collection, but we came in terms of investing in a proper state lottery, but I think they did not understand what it meant, and many people felt threatened. They did not seem to understand the structure of the transaction.
There was a bit of frustration. Eventually, we went on to work in Anambra State for years, maybe seven years or thereabout, but the full value of what we could have brought couldn’t succeed because it became politicized. Few people were playing dual roles, both as regulators and as investors, but they didn’t understand the structure of the agreement between us and the state government. So we’ve done that, and we’ve gone ahead to do that in a couple of other states.
Is there a state where the proposed model succeeded in the manner you expected?
After that, I think that we have written the playbook for this industry, substantial in certain areas. Many other people have come to do this with states. But I don’t think they are getting the full value of it. Some don’t really have the investment; we came with the investment. So, some of the people are just collection agents. They still do not have any kind of framework that will help them effectively; help the state in terms of regulations, but we came with the full investments, which was kind of frustrating to that extent.
If you were to advise, what would you have the states do?
Every state is different. First of all, look at the capacity of the state and the size of the market. If you look at Lagos, it definitely needs a proper regulatory board. It is a huge market, it is a commercial city. Most of the money comes from Lagos State. If you go to a place like Zamfara, setting a whole board may not be necessary. It is not going to succeed. It is a waste of time. It is fine to just help in terms of revenue collection. What you could alternatively do as well is to galvanise your revenue board. That’s a way of looking at it.
That’s if they have the skills. The problem with gaming is that gaming is a parasitic industry. It parasites on sports. It is not an industry on its own, it doesn’t really have any value on its own. The value is when you benchmark it or when you layer it on sports, on media, on all those other things that come to converge.
We are moving in a very converged industry right now.
And you know, the technical ability, the knowledge to understand how this is playing out is part of the challenge. First thing is to get people to even have the knowledge, the understanding of the industry and then possibly you can look at how you, as an individual or even as a consultant, could do that. What most people are doing now is just really scraping the surface of what they can potentially do in this industry.
What are some legal bottlenecks plaguing the gaming industry?
In almost every industry, there are always legal bottlenecks, and that’s why we always go to court to get legal interpretation. So, there are so many things that are happening… possibly I would refer you to my keynote address when the National Lottery had its first stakeholders meeting. I gave the keynote address. And in that keynote address, I gave them what the solution was to what these perceived challenges are. I think the big challenge for most operators is the issue of jurisdiction between the national agency and the states.
That’s the fundamental problem, and they can go either way, depending on how you want to argue it. But whatever we do is tied to our constitution. Every other power, state or whatever is derived from the constitution. What the constitution says can also be surmised by saying that things have also moved drastically. When most of these laws were passed, e-commerce was not a thing. Now we are in the era of e-commerce. Whatever you do, physically, there’s a digital side of it. These are things that we can explore and find a resolution.