Isle of Man Gambling Supervision Commission's  Regulatory Objectives

The Gambling Supervision Act 2010 established the Gambling Supervision Commission as an independent Statutory Board of the Isle of Man Government, setting out in law its status, constitution and regulatory objectives.

The GSC both licence and regulate all land-based gambling operations (casino, amusement and slot machines, betting offices and lotteries) as well as all online gambling activities. In December 2020, legal powers were transferred to the GSC to allow the licensing and regulating of the Isle of Man medicinal cannabis sector.

Regulatory objectives - Gambling

The regulatory objectives, in relation to the Commission’s functions relating to gambling, are to 

  1. ensure that gambling is conducted in a fair and open way;
  2. protecting children and other vulnerable persons from being harmed or exploited by gambling; and
  3. prevent gambling from being a source of crime or disorder, associated with crime or disorder, or used to support crime.

Regulatory objectives - Medicinal Cannabis

The regulatory objective, in relation to the Commission’s transferred functions, is preventing the misuse of cannabinol, cannabinol derivatives, cannabis or cannabis resin. 

How we apply our regulatory objectives

In satisfying our regulatory objectives, we apply three organisational values:

  1. We seek to be trusted with our custody of the sectors we regulate, which means that we pride ourselves on understanding the complex technicalities of the sectors and managing the risk that arises from them;
  2. We seek to be balanced, so that those who deserve our trust, because they are compliant with our requirements, have more freedom to operate; and those who fall short receive more of our attention until they have come up to standard; and finally
  3. We seek to be efficient with the resources entrusted to us by Government. We try to retain our staff because recruitment is expensive on time and resource; we try to economise when we make decisions on equipment and travel; and we employ the minimum number of staff in order to remain effective for licensing and supervision.