Minding the gap between regulatory compliance and safer gambling

Gambling has become an increasingly prominent topic of conversation across the media landscape, and it’s not always in a positive context these days. Despite the promise of consumer protections that come with the expansion of regulated gambling, cases of gambling addiction and gambling-related harm continue to provide provocative front-page fodder for industry and mainstream outlets alike.

The industry’s endeavor to provide a safe gambling environment for customers is apparent at the surface level. Laws and regulations almost universally include some protections for customers, and there are dozens of supplemental gambling standards and certifications in use across the world.

None of them create a particularly high bar for operator responsibility. In broad strokes, these policies and programs tend to lay out a simple set of guidelines focused on two basic areas of concern:

1. Preventing underage play

2. Preventing excessive play

These are the bare-minimum requirements for any approach to safer gambling and fulfilling them is often a matter of rote compliance for operators rather than a faithful effort to protect customers from danger.

Prevention and detection are only part of the safer-gambling equation, the first steps in combating gambling-related harm. Once a problem has fully materialised, these tools lose their effectiveness. And that’s where the gap between regulations and solutions becomes apparent. Today’s standards do very little to address gambling-related harm, lacking both sufficient safeguards for customers and sufficient funding for practical interaction and intervention. A hotline phone number at the bottom of the app is pretty much the end of the industry’s support chain.

In the absence of a self-correction from operators, policymakers are obliged to take a more active approach in safer gambling. That includes creating laws and regulations that truly protect consumers, as well as enforcing those policies with an increased level of diligence. What’s the point of drafting a policy if compliance isn’t compelled?

That being said, fines should be the least of operators’ concerns. Over-advertising continues to spark widespread public backlash in regulated gambling jurisdictions across the world, a climate condition that often foreshadows a severe regulatory crackdown. Ireland, the Netherlands and a handful of other countries are working through this stage of the safer-gambling conversation right now.

A bad rep

There’s also that aforementioned pressure from the media. Major international news outlets frequently report on the worst cases of gambling-related harm, and these stories almost universally demonstrate abject failures in the safer-gambling infrastructure. A measurable increase in cases of gambling addiction has spawned additional criticism from the public and increased scrutiny from regulators in a number of markets.

So, yes. Safer gambling standards are good things to have. They can take up some of the slack for often-inadequate regulations, providing practical guardrails for operators that are otherwise incentivised to maximise their immediate profit at any cost. But these standards typically don’t do enough to address the actual harm gambling can cause, and they’re almost never driven by scientific research on impact and effectiveness. They’re a box to tick.

This is one area where industry trade groups could play a key role. These organisations act as intermediaries between policymakers and operators, putting them in a unique position to exert positive pressure on all parties. These alliances should be highly focused on protecting customers and minimising the risk of harm, which involves a whole lot more than just making sure members are denying access to underage and at-risk gamblers. It involves working with all parties to develop and implement standards that prevent and address the real harm gambling can (and does) cause for some.

The next era of safer-gambling standards will increase its focus on interaction and intervention and will hopefully increase the prevention work it has tried to lead. And the most successful operators will be the ones that nurture their customers as long-term partners, working for the wellness of society as a whole rather than simply ticking a box on a licence application.

Regulatory compliance is only the entry point for a much broader discussion on safer gambling.

Svend Aage Kirk has had a very successful career in a range of fields, most recently as CEO of TurnAvisual, before moving to focus on gambling in 2017. In 2018, he co-founded Mindway AI, a leading tool which helps operators and companies to spot early signs of gambling addiction. This passion for making the gambling industry a safer and more sustainable place led Kirk to join SG:certified earlier this year. SG:certified focuses on sustainability gambling and provides a platform to enable operators to achieve the SG certifications required to make them a responsible operator. Kirk helps educate companies to understand their impact and exposure to compliance risks as well as training their staff in the different international certifications and regulatory frameworks.