The Gambling Commission’s independent advisers, the Advisory Board for Safer Gambling (“ABSG”) and the Digital Advisory Panel (“DAP”) were tasked by the Gambling Commission, with looking at reducing gambling harm online.  The Gambling Commission has recently published the advice from both advisers.

Advisory Board for Safer Gambling advice

Summary of key recommendations from the Advisory Board for Safer Gambling’s advice, written in September 2019:

1. Transparency and evaluation: Making assurance statements public documents with written feedback, creating a data repository and updating the evaluation protocol.
2. Detection of harms: Requiring licensees to be more transparent about the approaches used to detect harm and mandating minimum standards based on the best practice.
3. Effective interventions: By using the Implementation Plan for the National Strategy to pilot and evaluate a wide range of harm prevention interventions, creating a mechanism to work with experts by experience to co-create effective harm prevention activities, and improvements to the self-exclusion scheme and return to gambling from self-exclusion.  Also partnering with the financial services sector and exploring IP blocking powers to disrupt illegal online gaming.
4. Game design and product characteristics: Improving understanding on product and game characteristics and their links to harm, banning the use of credit cards, customer information on products and risks, banning reverse withdrawals and using further strong enforcement measures.
5. Stake, prize and speed of play limits: Planning how a regime could be implemented for online gambling and, unless significant progress is made by licensee on player protection, working with the Government to introduce online limits on stakes, prizes and speed of play.
6. Marketing and advertising: Exploring technological solutions to reduce exposure for children and vulnerable people (including AdTech to proactively restrict exposure) and advocating a precautionary approach in relation to children and vulnerable people.

Digital Advisory Panel advice

The Digital Advisory Panel, which reports to the Board of the Gambling Commission via the CEO, meets approximately six times a year.  Presently, it has six members from a range of technology backgrounds, including the current Managing Director of Twitter UK.

The Digital Advisory Panel’s terms of reference refer to the pace of change in the online gambling industry giving rise to new risks, opportunities and regulatory challenges, which the Gambling Commission must be equipped to face.  It is envisaged that the Digital Advisory Panel will assist in this challenge by advising on the digital landscape and emerging trends.

The advice, written in September 2019, refers to the Gambling Commission “challenge” as follows:

“The extent and nature of gambling in GB is being transformed by technology, particularly mobile technology.  It is also clear that there is no sign that this growth is going to stop. The initial wave of online gambling characterised by the web, mobile apps and the links to social, is being overrun by a second wave of digital technologies impacting on the industry created by big data, analytics, artificial intelligence, the internet of things and wearables.

The impact of this second wave of digital technologies has yet to materialise fully. These technologies present operators with the opportunity to generate further growth by using the techniques developed by social media and games companies to maintain player engagement with their mobile apps and thereby increase their revenue and profits.”

In its advice, the Digital Advisory Panel refers to Ofcom research suggesting that British people:

• on average spend 24 hours a week online, twice as long as 10 years ago;
• one in five of all adults spending 40 hours online each week;
• check their phone every 12 minutes of the waking day; and
• two in five adults first look at their phone within five minutes of waking up, climbing to 65% of those aged under 35.

Summary of key recommendations:

1. Habit forming apps: Regulating software development for apps and sites that promote addictive and compulsive usage.  This might include increasing the ‘friction’ of using this software but will certainly involve consultation with operators and academics.
2. Developing a single customer view: Requiring large operators to form an “arms-length joint venture” that will provide a service that will consolidate a single customer view for all online gambling activity, with improved interventions for problem gamblers and gamblers at-risk and further research into markers of harm and specific gambling triggers.
3. Online advertising: Requiring operators to report annually on their progress in directing advertising away from problem and at-risk gamblers, and children.
4. Gambling Commission operations: Avoiding the temptation to build online or digital technologies to monitor the activities of the operators or gamblers and considering the appointment of commissioners with digital awareness.

The Gambling Commission will host a “kick-off event”, in Birmingham, in February 2020 for industry and technology providers on the industry-wide challenge to find a technology solution to creating a single customer view.  We expect that details will be published very shortly.

Following both sets of advice, the Gambling Commission has set tough challenges to the industry and expects to see progress on them by Spring 2020.

On 14 January 2020, the head of mental health services in England, Claire Murdoch, penned a bold letter to the chief executives of BetFred, Bet365, Flutter, GVC and William Hill “regarding the increasingly clear and worrying links between gambling and mental ill health”.  She refers to having seen “first-hand the devastating impact on mental wellbeing of addiction” and her concern that the prevalence of gambling in our society is causing harm.  In December 2019, a report, Skins in the Game, by the Royal Society of Public Health found that over half of young people believe that playing a video game could lead to gambling and that the link between gaming and gambling is a negative one.  

Ms Murdoch expresses her concern of tactics used to target those who are chasing their losses and VIP incentives, and refers to incentives that “appear designed to undermine people’s ability to stay in control: bet to view streaming; pervasive advertising; and rewards in exchange for bets, all are likely to make decision-making for vulnerable people significantly harder.”  Her letter also refers to the gambling industry having a responsibility “to prevent the occasional flutter turning into a dangerous habit” and requests provision of “urgent detail on actions” being taken to reduce “the likelihood and severity of gambling addiction”.

The letter ends declaring “n industry-wide effort is needed to tackle this, and…seeking reassurance that taking measures, including the following, to minimise harm:

• immediately ban credit card bets from your websites – ahead of the gambling commission’s restrictions due to come into force later this year – helping ensure people don’t spend money they don’t have and potentially rack up life changing debt and the anxiety that comes with it;
• stop the targeting of high-loss customers with the so-called ‘VIP’ treatment which includes incentives such as free tickets and bets; and
• end bet to view commercial deals which require a stake in exchange for sports streaming access.”

The NHS has also confirmed the opening of a new treatment centre for addiction related mental ill health, alongside the 14 gambling clinics announced in the NHS Long Term Plan last year.

On 15 January 2020, Brigid Simmonds, Chair of the Betting and Gaming Council, responded to Ms Murdoch’s letter stating “e take our responsibility to our customers incredibly seriously and we are determined to raise standards and improve safer gambling.” Ms Simmonds acknowledged the important points raised by Ms Murdoch’s letter and summarised some of the work the members had already done, including new age-verification checks, increased funding for research, education and training, the whistle-to-whistle ban on gambling advertising, the creation of GamStop, extensive work on algorithms to help identify those at risk of harmful play and the very recent waived exclusivity on FA Cup games.  She added the current work of the Betting and Gaming Council’s on affordability checks, AdTech to block ad, search engines blocking ads from non-UK licensed operators’ advertising and the Safer Gambling Commitments targeted to:

• prevent underage gambling and protect young people;
• increase support for treatment of gambling harm;
• strengthen and expand codes of practice for advertising and marketing;
• protect and empower customers; and
• promote a culture of safer gambling.

Ms Simmonds’ letter expressed a keenness to understand in greater detail Ms Murdoch’s experience, knowledge and concerns and how the industry may address them, and ended with an invitation to meet with the chief executives.

On 2 October 2019, Neil McArthur delivered a speech to CEOs at a breakfast briefing in London in which he looked back at the year, talked about the challenges in the industry and three opportunities to reduce harm:

• opportunity 1: game and product design;
• opportunity 2: inducements to gambling; and
• opportunity 3: advertising technology.

In his speech, he referred to the work of the Gambling Commission’s Advisory Board for Safer Gambling (“ABSG”) and the Digital Advisory Panel (“DAP”), which were tasked with looking at reducing gambling harm online.  The Gambling Commission has recently received advice from the ABSG and DAP, which we have reported on separately.

The Gambling Commission announced the formation of three industry working groups:

1. Safer products: The industry code for responsible product and game design working group: This group is led by SG Gaming and Playtech, and will set out how to produce safer products in the future, techniques to use when designing apps, online games and gaming machine products, the risks associated with each product and mitigation, and a clear explanation of what is unacceptable.
2. Safer advertising online working group: This group is led by Sky Betting and Gaming, and will consider the opportunities to reduce the amount of advertising seen by children, young people and vulnerable adults, and GambleAware’s recent findings set out in its interim report on gambling adverts online, including social media.
3. Use of VIP incentives: The incentivisation of high value customers working group:  This group is led by GVC and will consider bonuses, hospitality and gifts (particularly for VIPs) are offered in a manner which is consistent with licensing objectives to make gambling fairer, safer and crime free, and identify how existing rules can be strengthened.

All three working groups will work closely with the Betting and Gaming Council.