UK self-exclusion scheme begins initial roll-out
Operators including Paddy Power and Ladbrokes among the first to sign up to GAMSTOP which is expected to fully launch later this year
The UK’s national online self-exclusion scheme GAMSTOP has gone live with a number of operators including Paddy Power and Ladbrokes ahead of a full launch later this year, EGR Intel has learned.
Customers of a number of UK-licensed operators can now access the new GAMSTOP website via a link at the bottom of the page, and are then welcomed by a pop-up message announcing the first phase of the scheme.
GAMSTOP does not currently include all UK operators but will be formally launched in the coming months when it has become part of the licence conditions for all operators licensed by the Gambling Commission.
“At this stage, the website is being referred to as a multi-operator scheme and provides a broader opportunity to self-exclude than what is currently available,” Katie Reynolds-Jones, head of operations at GAMSTOP, told EGR Intel.
She added: “We make this very clear to consumers via a pop-up on entering the website as we do want to manage expectations amongst consumers.
“More and more operators are integrating with the system, however, as I’ve said, it cannot become a comprehensive national online system involving every licensed operator until the licence condition comes into force.”
GAMSTOP will for the first time enable customers to self-exclude from all gambling websites licensed by the Gambling Commission in a single step.
Sky Betting & Gaming CEO Richard Flint recently echoed Reynolds-Jones’ sentiments about managing expectations once GAMSTOP had launched and urged operators to learn from its recent self-exclusion failings.
“The industry has to be careful with the implementation of GAMSTOP that we learn from this incident and we make it sufficiently difficult for people to have duplicate accounts, because then it becomes an industry-wide problem, rather than just a company-specific one,” the CEO said.
“GAMSTOP is a good thing but I think we need to be aware it won’t be perfect on day one and it will have these sort of issues, even if they are not exactly the same.”