The global regulatory elite meets from tomorrow in Lima with prediction markets, illegal gambling and AI at the center
The Annual Conference of the International Association of Gaming Regulators (IAGR) will bring together top-level regulators and decision-makers in Peru from October 19 to 22 to address the major fronts that are transforming gaming supervision.
Lima will become the world center of gaming regulation from tomorrow, October 19, until Thursday 22. The International Association of Gaming Regulators (IAGR) is holding its 2026 Annual Conference at the JW Marriott in Miraflores, hosted by the Peruvian Ministry of Foreign Trade and Tourism (MINCETUR) and a particularly revealing program of what the major concerns of supervisors are today: prediction markets, illegal gambling, artificial intelligence, money laundering, payments, sports integrity, advertising, self-exclusion and cross-border cooperation.
INFOPLAY announced IAGR's return to Lima a year ago, eleven years after its previous conference in the Peruvian capital.
IAGR President Ben Haden will officially open the meeting by focusing on increasingly connected markets, the need for international cooperation and the challenge posed by illegal operators, product convergence and new technological tools.
Immediately after, Yuri Guerra Padilla, general director of Casino Games and Slot Machines of the Peruvian MINCETUR, will present Peru's regulatory model and the evolution of the Latin American market.
The first major international table already shows the level of the program. Participating in the debate on the mandate of regulators in a connected market will be Anders Dorph, director of the Danish Gambling Authority; Ida López, president of ALEA; Fabio Macorin, assistant secretary of the Secretariat of Prizes and Betting of the Ministry of Finance of Brazil; Lou Rogacki, of the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement; and Anne Marie Caulfield, CEO of the Gambling Regulatory Authority of Ireland.
The moderation will be Andrew Rhodes, former CEO of the British Gambling Commission.
One of the blocks that arouses the most interest will arrive on the first day: "Prediction Markets, Event Contracts, and Regulatory Arbitrage".
Prediction markets officially enter the agenda of the major international regulators with a session aimed at analysing consumer protection, sporting integrity, advertising and, especially, the attempt of certain betting-like products to be placed outside the traditional regulation of gambling.
Paul Brodeur, commissioner of the Massachusetts Gaming Commission; Jesús Acevedo, president of the Buenos Aires City Lottery; Marc Ellinger, of the Ellinger-Bell Law firm; Joe Webster, of Hobbs Strauss; and Antonis M. Vartholomeos, president of the Hellenic Gaming Commission, will participate. The Argentinean Tomás Botta, partner of MF Estudio, will act as moderator.
This is precisely one of the debates that INFOPLAY has been following particularly intensively during 2026, given the expansion of platforms such as Kalshi and Polymarket and the growing difficulty in establishing where a financial product ends and a bet begins.
The first day will also follow the money trail. Jason Lane, CEO of the Jersey Gambling Commission, will moderate a panel on money laundering prevention, terrorist financing, payment methods, digital wallets and organized crime.
The aim will be to analyse how regulators can use data on financial movements and suspicious transactions to detect criminal risk and also possible sports fixing. Among the participants are Manuela Croci, from GCGRA; Harris Tsangarides, head of the Cyprus Gaming & Casino Supervision Commission; and Anna Scherfig, from the Danish Gambling Authority.
Tuesday 20 will begin with another highly topical topic: integrity of sports betting and convergence with event markets.
Khalid Ali, CEO of the International Betting Integrity Association (IBIA), will share a table with Adam Bjorn, CEO of Plannatech US, and Professor Georgios Yannopoulos, from the Hellenic Gaming Commission.
On the same day, there will be a debate on how regulators should act in the face of products that no longer fit into traditional gaming categories. Daron Dorsey, president and CEO of AGEM; Aftab Rizvi, CEO of Gaming Associates; and Vusi Mtsweni, CEO of the Mpumalanga Economic Regulator, will participate.
One of the most relevant institutional names will come later. Mike Dreitzer, president of the Nevada Gaming Control Board, will give a lecture on the future of regulation and the need to modernize supervisory systems in the face of new products, new access channels and increasingly complex market structures.
Sarah Gardner, acting CEO of the UK Gambling Commission, will also speak on her own speech, explaining the latest regulatory changes in Great Britain and their possible influence on other markets. The British authority will place special emphasis on the new resources aimed at combating illegal gambling and the need to strengthen international cooperation.
The agenda also addresses self-exclusion beyond national borders. The panel, moderated by Corinne Valletta, General Counsel at Betsson, will feature Pedro Romero, CEO of BetBlocker; Jennifer Shatley, President and CEO of the Responsible Online Gaming Association; and Margaret Carran, Professor of Law at City St George's, University of London.
Another block will focus directly on advertising, affiliates and the responsibility of digital platforms, analyzing how far the responsibility of search engines, social networks, affiliates and other intermediaries should go when the content of illegal operators reaches the consumer.
Wednesday 21 will be especially intense in the fight against the black market. Michel Groothuizen, president of the Dutch authority Ksa; Ross Parker, director of Corporate and Regulatory Affairs at Entain; and Dave Phillips, COO of the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario, will analyze how to dismantle the ecosystem that sustains illegal gambling: affiliates, hosting providers, app stores, payment systems, search engines, social networks and domain rotation.
Artificial intelligence will also have its own block, no longer from a futuristic perspective but from concrete applications for regulators. Mark Pace, president of the International Gaming Standards Association; Ian Hughes, Chief Revenue Officer of GLI; and Rasmus Kjaergaard, CEO of Mindway AI, will address AI tools for document review, anomaly detection, intelligence analysis and regulatory oversight.
Latin America will finally have a specific table moderated by Karen Sierra-Hughes, GLI's vice president for Latin America, the Caribbean and Spain.
Ida López, president of ALEA; the Peruvian Yuri Guerra Padilla; and Loraine Irizarry Torres, director of Gaming and Road Machines of the Puerto Rico Gaming Commission, will participate. The objective will be to compare models of regulation, legalization, consumer protection and the fight against the illegal market in a region that is increasingly relevant on the international gaming map.
Lotteries will also have their space, with Javier Milián, president of the National Charity Lottery of El Salvador; Khalid Jones, CEO of Allwyn North America; and Moustapha Camara, president of the Senegalese lottery LONASE, addressing the meeting points between public lotteries and gambling regulators.
The conference will conclude on Thursday 22 with a view to 2027, with Ben Haden, President-elect Brian Krolicki and Dave Phillips analysing what tools regulators will need in more connected markets: regulatory intelligence, technological supervision, cybersecurity, prevention of money laundering, sports integrity and international cooperation.
In total, IAGR has set up more than 40 sessions, conferences, workshops and meetings over four days.
The slogan chosen, "Steady Hands, Shifting Ground: Advancing regulation in a connected world", sums up the substance of the meeting: regulators are trying to maintain control in a market in which products, operators, payments, technology and risks are increasingly crossing the traditional boundaries of gambling regulation.
