The meticulously choreographed Responsible Gambling Trust (RGT) “Harm Minimisation Conference” has now become an annual event, as the bookmakers seek to convince the public and politicians of their willingness to take a lead on social responsibility.
Reconciling Fixed Odds Betting Terminals (FOBTs) – on which users can stake up to £100 a spin on highly addictive content – with the notion of social responsibility is no easy task, particularly when such a significant proportion of revenue comes from users experiencing harm. However the RGT, led by former Association of British Bookmakers Chair Neil Goulden, know what is at stake for the charity’s funders if they fail to appease the public and politicians.
One such politician is the Minister responsible for gambling, Tracey Crouch MP, whom the RGT invited to be a keynote speaker. Ms. Crouch spoke of gambling being a “silent addiction” that “may go unnoticed until it’s too late”. She told of personal friendships whose lives had been “shattered” because of gambling, and flipped Senet Group Chair Wanda Goldwag’s quote – that 93% of people are not problem or at risk gamblers – on its head, saying “7% are not OK” and “though the number of problem gamblers can appear small, we all know harm extends to families and friends”.
Crucially, Ms Crouch said that it is not enough for the industry to attempt to make progress in social responsibility, she wants to see results. Ms Crouch was not able to stay beyond delivering her address so she missed out on watching a day packed with successive displays of rhetorical acrobatics.
The best example of such came from David Forrest, who had conducted research for the Rank Group on the impact of increasing the maximum stake on casino B1 machines from £2 to £5 a spin. Mr Forrest’s analysis showed that the average stake per spin went up from 77p to 86p, increasing the house win by 7.1% per week. The overall amount bet also went up by 10%. There was no progression from infrequent to frequent use, but the retention of frequent players went up from 60% to 66%, and the proportion of gamblers who lost heavily increased from 6.2% to 7.5%. The proportion of players who lost heavily and spent more than four hours playing also increased, with a disproportionate level of extra spending coming from younger players gambling late at night.
Despite all of this, Mr Forrest concluded that: “If you control the maximum stake on one gambling activity, they will go to an activity where there is no limit.” Noting that the findings from this research may have wider implications is likely to have been the reason for this rather laboured conclusion, for which there was absolutely no evidential basis.
Simon Tanner from the Responsible Gambling Strategy Board then said that most of the people taking advantage of the "freedom" permitted by the increase to £5 are precisely the people we should be most concerned about. Mr Forrest responded saying the conclusions are indirect as they did not have access to customers so could not conduct problem gambling screens, so it instead relies on what we know about vulnerable groups. Mr Tanner said we cannot move forward if we do not use population based data: “If we said it had to focus on each individual we could go on forever. Population based data is useful for policy, and any inference from such is useful in public health terms.”
It seems the RGT’s smoke was not thick enough to cover such inconvenient truths.
Another incident of note followed a presentation from Alex Kademoski from Demos which provided insight into research conducted on social media and gambling. Demos found that the “responsible gambling” and “gambling support group” Twitter accounts were not reaching the most at-risk groups, who were most connected to what were described as “tipsters”. This led to some head scratching from Neil Goulden, who said this is something that the industry needs to work on. But do they already have the answer? As a member of the audience pointed out, it is likely that “tipsters” are actually affiliate sites, funded by the gambling sector. So it appears they are already able to target the most vulnerable groups effectively when there is a commercial incentive!
This illustrates the issue with industry self-regulation. The bookmakers know that the most vulnerable demographic contributes a significant proportion of their revenue, so harm reduction would mean a revenue reduction they are not willing to accept. Their solution is to “look like” they are doing something, whilst knowing it will not have any impact. Unfortunately for them, Tracey Crouch wants to see progress, so tokenistic schemes will leave the government with no choice but to reduce the maximum stake on FOBTs, their most harmful product.