Tech & Innovation
Tech & Innovation
“ All these technologies that are around – GamBlock, Betfilters, Gamban – they have flaws within them so they will slow down addicts but they will not stop them”
Too little, too late? Knighton’ s objection is not actually to the product itself – he says it is a“ good initiative” but that responsible gambling practices“ need to be far deeper within the industry”.
“ You need to be communicating with your players throughout their player journey and that part is more important than Gamban. Why did they get to that point? Why was nobody intervening throughout that player’ s journey so they didn’ t get to that point?” he says.
“ In an ideal world, operators and regulators the world over would work together to minimise gambling-related harm”
But the operators using Gamban aren’ t necessarily using it in isolation. According to Maris Bonello, head of player sustainability research and integrity team at Kindred, it’ s just one part of the solution.
“ The tool is an important complement to softer control tools, offering customers different ways to restrain their gambling,” he says.“ We understand that even when customers self-exclude with us, we should still explore initiatives that can help minimise harm – even though they are no longer our customers. Gamban is a great example of this.
“ If a gambler decided to close his account on a Kindred brand and then gets tempted to gamble somewhere else, the harm is just being augmented, and it can get only worse.”
On the last point, this is where tools such as Gamban offer advantages to an operator beyond simply blocking a user from their site.“ For too long we’ ve seen operators think that if they act responsibly then that is all that matters,” says Symons.“ But actually the problem is with the thousands of sites out there that are constantly trying to get new players by offering bonuses.”
“ So if an operator bans you from its site, it has just passed on the buck so what we are saying is block with Gamban and you are blocked from all sites. It levels the playing field, it removes the competitive aspect.”
This also gives it the edge over the delayed industry-wide selfexclusion scheme GamStop. After all, even if GamStop gets all
UK-licensed operators on board, there are scores of sites operating out of Curaçao and Costa Rica targeting UK consumers that are unlikely to be concerned about responsible gambling initiatives when they don’ t seem to be concerned about operating without a licence.
Issues remain But neither Gamban, nor its predecessors, are doing anything to fend off the thorny issue of gambling exclusion being separate to gambling marketing, something the UK Gambling Commission has identified as a shortcoming of the GamStop initiative.
This appears to be a tricky problem to solve across the entire industry, although in Europe GDPR may have gone at least some way towards doing so. In an ideal world, operators and regulators the world over would work together to minimise gambling-related harm, but in the real world, where efforts are fragmented, surely products such as Gamban can only help?
That’ s the view of Mark Griffiths, psychologist and director of the International Gaming Research Unit at Nottingham Trent University anyway. Although Griffiths says he’ s not aware of any“ research that has evaluated the extent to which any of these tools work”, he adds,“ I welcome anything that has the potential to help people reduce or stop their gambling, or to just gamble responsibly.
“ Personally, I don’ t think individuals should have to pay for such tools themselves and that gambling companies should foot the costs if their clientele want them to do so.”
And by footing the cost – operators typically buy a batch of licences and distribute these to players at no charge – surely as well as helping individuals, operators are going some way towards proving they are serious about responsible gambling. It certainly can’ t hurt, says Knighton.“ Any operator that is stepping up to the mark and implementing these initiatives, it is great because what they are telling their players is that they look after them.”
It’ s a sentiment Bonello agrees with.“ The main aim is consumer protection and if a company is willing to invest in serious initiatives, it would show that they are serious about their sustainability work,” he says.“ Improving the negative image in the press can be a result of it, but there needs to be much more done by the industry as a whole to achieve that.”
While Knighton and Bonello may well have a point in that more does need to be done by the industry, in the meantime there seems little harm adopting initiatives being developed elsewhere.
iGamingBusiness | Issue 111 | July / August 2018 15