This infographic highlights interesting results and recent trends from the Gambling Commission’s quarterly telephone survey on gambling participation. The Problem Gambling Severity Index (PGSI) mini-screen is conducted as part of the survey and the results provide insight into the risks to gamblers in Great Britain.
Safer gambling week special: Online gambling has got much of the attention, but preventing harm in retail betting can be a difficult problem where technological solutions can be harder to implement. iGB looks at what safer gambling tools are available at betting shops.
To the average person in the UK, the most notable sign every year that it’s Safer Gambling Week would be from betting shops.
The industry’s initiatives during the week are wide-reaching, across both physical and online spaces.
But betting shops, despite a decline in numbers in recent years, are still on almost every high street in the country. And almost every one is plastered with signs encouraging people to think more about their gambling activity.
But inside those retail betting shops, what can be done to protect customers?
As pressure from the media and government around harmful gambling grows, the industry has attempted to show that it can deal with potential harm without needing strict interventions that could..
Flutter Entertainment-owned FanDuel Group has announced a series of new responsible gambling initiatives to coincide with the American Gaming Association’s (AGA) Responsible Gaming Education Month.
The group hosted its first, business-wide “Play Well Day” where workers were invited to an employee-only event, promoting the role of staff in creating a culture that embraces safer play.
During the Play Well Day, FanDuel announced the appointment of professional boxer, mixed martial artist and wrestler Amanda Serrano as a responsible gaming ambassador.
Read the full story on iGB North America.
A new study conducted by NatCen for GambleAware claims that 79.0% of online operator revenue comes from the highest-staking 10% of accounts, with online slots showing a particularly concentrated spending pattern.
The study used records from seven online operators, which each provided data about 20,000 accounts active between July 2019 and June 2019. These seven operators together made up more than 85% of the UK betting market, though only 37.5% of the gaming market.
It then weighted the data from these accounts to be representative of the overall online gambling market.
For each customer, NatCen had access to betting data showing the exact date, time and stake of all bets placed by each customer, while for gaming, data was split into 15-minute windows.
For both online betting and gaming, the research found that revenue at these operators was highly concentrated among a relatively small share of accounts.
Overall, it found that the 10% of gamblers with the largest stakes – all stak..
Norwegian regulator Lotteri-og Stiftelsestilsynet has called on monopoly operator Norsk Tipping to reduce the availability and number of casino games on its site, and for the introduction of loss limits for sports betting.
In the regulator’s 2021 annual report, it found that both customer and turnover numbers reached a record high for Norsk Tipping, one of the country’s two monopolies alongside racing operator Norsk Rikstoto.
“There may be several reasons for the growth,” the regulator said. “One of the reasons may be that people through the corona pandemic have had more free time due to restrictions in leisure activities.”
This came despite the operator reducing its monthly loss limit for “high-risk” games from NOK10,000 (£869/€1,037/$1,117) to NOK7,500 in December 2020, before cutting it further, to NOK5,000, in September 2021.
While it noted that this represents a success for channelisation, the regulator added that it had asked the operator to strengthen its player protection ..
Online gaming behemoth Flutter remains confident that its unmatched scale will help it make long-term decisions in the UK, US and mainland Europe, as chief executive Peter Jackson and chief financial officer Jonathan Hill revealed on the operator's 2021 earnings call.
The operator revealed in its 2021 results that it struggled in some of its international markets, where Pokerstars leads its offering. In Germany, terms of the country’s Fourth State Treaty on Gambling allowed online casino nationwide for the first time but with strict conditions and high taxes, while in the Netherlands, operators that did not receive a licence were required to block all Dutch customers. Last year, the business agreed to acquire Tombola, which does hold a Dutch licence.
While these struggles impacted business in 2021, Hill said that the scale of the Flutter business meant that it could afford to work in difficult conditions.
“One of the benefits of having a portfolio is, just because international..
A survey from the Gambling Commission suggests British attitudes towards gambling are improving for the first time since the survey began, after a long period of worsening public perception.
The statistics come from the Gambling Commission’s quarterly telephone survey, which examines gambling prevalence, attitudes and rates of harm.
The regulator noted that December 2021’s edition, which saw 4,021 people polled, marked the first time in which responses suggested statistically significant year-on-year improvements in attitudes towards gambling since the surveys began in 2016.
However while attitudes softened when compared to December 2020, a majority of the population continued to express anti-gambling sentiments.
For example, in the year to December 2020, 63.4% of respondents said that “gambling should be discouraged”. However, in the 2021 edition, this total had dipped to 58.9%.
Similarly, the portion of the population who agreed that gambling was “dangerous for family life” drop..
Flutter Entertainment has revealed its new safer gambling strategy in which it will switch focus from intervening when problems arise, to preventing them from happening at all.
The operator aims to “make every moment safe for [its] customers”.
Launching the new strategy, Flutter UK and Ireland chief executive Conor Grant described it as “a refreshed and comprehensive” approach for each market.
“The strategy is the culmination of many months of hard work, bringing together the best from across our existing businesses, gathering insights from industry experts, customers and colleagues to identify priority issues to focus on, and challenging areas where we need to go further,” Grant explained.
The strategy is broken down into five core principles: discover, educate, empower, understand and support.
The discover aspect aims to advance the industry’s understanding of gambling harm. Educate will implement strategies to improve all customers’ and colleagues’ understanding of gambling ..
Lithuania’s Supreme Administrative Court has rejected an appeal from unlicensed operator Interstorm Curaçao that argued the Gambling Supervisory Authority must warn offshore operators before taking action to shut down their sites.
The regulator issued an order for Interstorm – which operates the SLL365 website for Casino Shangri-La – to stop promoting unlicensed online gambling in Lithuania in May 2020.
However, the operator filed an appeal with the Vilnius Regional Administrative Court that month, arguing that it had not received any warning before the regulator took action.
The court rejected this appeal, noting that there was no requirement for the Gambling Supervisory Authority to warn unlicensed operators.
The operator then took its appeal to the Supreme Administrative Court, but this court agreed with the lower ruling.
The Supreme Administrative Court noted that being able to quickly block sites was a central component in the Supervisory Authority’s powers against online gamblin..
