The industry-linked charity the Responsible Gambling Trust (RGT) hosted its annual conference last week, giving the Association of British Bookmakers (ABB) the opportunity to showcase its latest attempt at harm minimisation.
And the sum total of their efforts?
“Our algorithm is based on past known problem gamblers, and is formed using metrics like duration, frequency, wins and losses,” explained Graham Weir, the Responsible Gambling Manager at Ladbrokes. “Operators will send those flagged up an SMS, email or machine pop-up.” So problem gamblers, or gambling addicts, will get a text telling them they are gambling a bit too much.
In April, the bookmakers were forced by government to only permit bets of more than £50 a spin on Fixed Odds Betting Terminals (FOBTs) if the customer is signed up to a loyalty card or requests permission from staff. Bookmakers have used verified mobile phone numbers during the process of signing customers up in order to send text message marketing. Bearing in mind the government’s rationale for this measure was to track the play of what was thought to be the most vulnerable customers, texting these players offers amounts to no more than cynical opportunism. One has to wonder whether the same customers will receive “responsible gambling” texts one day, and an offer of free FOBT credit the next!
At the conference, the Campaign for Fairer Gambling (CFG) pointed out that the Gambling Commission had said a significant proportion of problem gamblers had remained unidentified in the RGT’s research on problem gambling detection algorithms. The CFG also asserted that empowering shop managers to ban those identified as problem gamblers would be far more effective than a text or an email, and would also be more ethical, analogous to the pub landlord who refuses to serve an alcoholic.
In response, Mr. Weir said the algorithm identifies people “on the road to problem gambling”. But during the ABB’s presentation, Mr. Weir said the algorithm was based on the data of past known problem gamblers. So either it attempts to identify addicts or it doesn’t. The problem with identifying problem gamblers, even in the early stages of addiction, is that harm is not limited to problem gamblers. If someone fulfills a criteria that categorises them a “problem gambler”, they have already experienced a great deal of harm. The licensing objective in the 2005 Gambling Act is the prevention of harm – not the prevention of problem gambling. The bookmakers, however, are preventing neither.
Identifying problem gamblers, or players experiencing harm, is only useful in telling us what is happening. It doesn’t seek to address why. And the answer to
why a significant proportion of betting shop customers are experiencing harm and getting addicted to gamblingis contained in the structural characteristics of FOBTs.
FOBTs allow the user to bet up to £100 every 20 seconds on a high speed version of roulette. Back in 2005, before Professor Mark Griffiths started working for the bookmakers’ – which had him endorse
an ineffective betting shop Code of Conductas “potentially world leading” – he said: "If I wanted to design a machine that would keep people in addictive behaviour patterns, then I would invent something that you could gamble a lot on again and again. Virtual roulette is designed to do this."
After a long line of commissioned work for the bookmakers, Professor Griffiths remains quiet about the harm FOBTs cause. As does the charity he established, GamCare, which receives all of its funding from the industry-linked RGT. Yet, in the Financial Times article announcing the ABB’s new Player Awareness System, their Chief Executive Dirk Hansen was able to find the time to call it: “A powerful step in the right direction.”
Gambling related harm is a consequence of an interplay between individuals, products and their environments. Yet the bookmakers, aided and abetted by institutions and academics that rely on them as a funding source, continue to focus their “efforts” on the individual. Until the impact of the product and environment is recognised, and the maximum stake is reduced to £2 a spin, a disproportionate level of gambling related harm will continue to emanate from the bookmakers.