Q&A: Betsson on creating a socially responsible business culture

Being a sustainable gambling business used to be all about developing and launching new games, seizing on new gaming trends and beating your competitors. However, in recent years, being a responsible gambling operator has become as important to sustaining a business as innovation and competition.

But as this need has entered the realm of c-level executives at the top level of the egaming industry, the interpretations of what being a responsible gambling business is and involves became myriad. All approaches to responsible gambling are valid if they place the customer at the very heart of any efforts.

Betsson Group has been at the forefront of the responsible gambling agenda. Indeed, the Stockholm-listed operator scooped one of the very first EGR Awards, celebrating socially responsible operators, and since then it has been further advancing this cause by investing in more tools, research, and resources. Apostolos Dousias, chief operating officer at Betsson Group, addresses how responsible gambling has become an integral part of the culture and changed Betsson’s way of doing business.

EGR Compliance: What role does responsible gambling play in your corporate social responsibility process?

Apostolos Dousias (AD): Being a responsible operator in relation to customers, suppliers, authorities, investors and other stakeholders is a cornerstone of Betsson Group’s business. Offering online gaming comes with the responsibility to ensure we offer our customers a safe, secure and fun experience.

This is a fact we understood early enough in this journey and, thus, ensured that responsible gaming became embedded in the core of the group’s culture. To this end, one of our core values to which we all proudly stand behind is ‘’We Play Fair’’, through which we strive to ensure that our customers are protected and treated in the most appropriate way at all times.

EGR Compliance: Does Betsson plan any corporate social responsibility enhancements in 2019?

AD: We continuously strive to improve our processes, tools and player protection safeguards. Since the start of 2018, we fully incorporated in our operations our in-house-built ‘’Customer Protection Engine’’. The engine calculates over 50 attributes ­– player losses, the velocity of deposits, cancellation of withdrawals to name a few – every day across the vast majority of our brands and assists our team of experts in the identification of any early signs of problem gambling.

Moreover, in the coming months, Betsson Group is planning to launch a dedicated budget calculation app which will help customers maintain a better understanding of their gambling spent and stay more in control. More information with regards to this application will be issued at a later date.

EGR Compliance: In your opinion, how important is it to maintain an ongoing approach to dealing with corporate social responsibility?

AD: The online gambling industry is very dynamic and fast-paced, and thereby our efforts within corporate social responsibility need to be pro-active and innovative and not lag behind. With an ever-changing playing field, it is vital that our corporate social responsibility framework reflects this.

At the end of the day, CSR at Betsson includes many different areas. An important part for the operations is responsible gaming but we do not limit our efforts to that field. For example, sustainable gambling with a CSR viewpoint is also about taking environmental considerations, contributing to society and being an employer that promotes a sound and inclusive corporate culture. The list can go on and as a company celebrating 55 years of history, we want to always be well positioned to maintain that approach.

EGR Compliance: What do you think has been the most important finding from research into problem gambling and why?

AD: Several prevalence studies have found that, at least in the western world, problem gambling prevalence rates have not increased but in some instances have shown a slight decline. This does, of course, not make it a lesser problem for the individuals and families affected. Recently, there has been a lot of discussion vis-à-vis the role of TV gambling advertising and its impact. In Italy, for example, we are in the final steps of a gambling advertising ban with the view of protecting the customer.

On this note, Italy’s Instituto Superiore Della Sanita (ISS) public health agency recently released the results of a survey, commissioned by the regulator of Italy into the scope of the nation’s gambling activities. What I found particularly interesting was that the study found that only 19.3% of Italians who actively gambled last year said they were inspired to do so after seeing a gambling advert, while the other 80.7% said advertising had no effect whatsoever on their willingness to gamble. I think research has and will always be important and it should serve as a guide so that the measures we adopt can have a truly positive effect and serve the purpose of their adoption.

EGR Compliance: How important is it for companies to do the right thing and embrace responsible gambling?

AD: It is vital for the gambling industry to continue embracing responsible gambling. It is not even something that should be negotiable or be up for discussion for any company that respects itself in 2018. Besides potentially harming vulnerable players, the absence of customer protection measures and failure to adopt the right stance will jeopardise the repute and future of the entire industry – eventually leading to overregulation.

To be fair, though, the industry together with the regulators has made a lot of steps towards the right direction, adopting customer protection measures and investing actively in the development of tools and data models which help sustainable gambling and offer protection to those who need it.

EGR Compliance: Do you have any responsible gambling procedures aimed specifically at Betsson employees? What are they and at what stages of employment do they occur?

AD: Yes, we are well aware that persons working in the industry may be at higher risk of developing gambling problems. We, therefore, have several policies and procedures in place which new employees are familiarised with during the on-boarding process. The policies regulate gambling at the workplace and all team managers get both internal and external training on how to pick up on problem gambling among their team members. The company also offers an employee assistance programme whenever necessary. In addition, we offer responsible gambling training to all our employees with different modules and at different frequencies depending on their role.

EGR Compliance: What role do player analysis and customer interaction play in your dealings with problem gamblers?

AD: Player analysis and customer interaction is very important and not limited to problem gamblers, but also extends to AML prevention and the whole Know Your Customer frame of mind. For these reasons, and as mentioned earlier, we have our own toolset which helps us to identify potential problems arising from the behaviour or the gameplay patterns of our customers.

In our view, we need to know our customers well enough to be able to intervene effectively and be there before someone develops a gambling problem. With the sheer volume of players, automated tools that flag up customers who display a change in their gambling behaviour are of great help, but such tools are always coupled with a manual analysis of the customers’ communication, gameplay and behavioural history.

On a daily basis, the relevant team goes through hundreds of reviewed accounts and following the analysis conducted, we may decide to initiate contact with specific customers. Through this process, we can get their personal view on their gambling behaviour and where necessary we hopefully agree on a strategy with the customer in question. We believe that if this strategy is agreed with customers, then they feel part of that decision and are more likely to protect themselves, especially where there is no national self-exclusion tool.

However, if the customer is unwilling or unable to adhere to our recommendations, we follow a set of operational procedures where we could enforce deposit or other limits or obligatory timeouts or even account closures.

EGR Compliance: How important is corporate social responsibility to the Betsson business model?

AD: Corporate social responsibility has always been an integral part of Betsson’s business model. Betsson was the first online company based in Malta to have a fulltime post dedicated to responsible gambling in 2007. The company also took a proactive approach to sustainable gambling by having a large set of tools for player protection, available to all its customer base and not just going for the minimum requirement per jurisdiction. We’ve also actively sponsored research and conferences on the issue of player protection to further raise awareness about this important area.

EGR Compliance: Why have you chosen to employ a hands-off approach in not imposing deposit limits?

AD: I don’t think we have chosen a hands-off approach in respect of deposit limits. In fact, we believe that deposit limits are a very important preventive tool and we regularly encourage customers through targeted campaigns to set limits which are on a reasonable level considering their personal circumstances. It is also the most common topic when we interact with customers who we have reason to believe have or may be in the process of developing gambling problems. In addition, we also have deposit limits as part of the registration process, presented to the customer base as an active choice. Since last year, the setting of deposit limits is one of the KPIs we report on to the stock market to actually increase transparency and as part of our sustainable gambling policy.

EGR Compliance: Do you think other operators are learning the lessons concerning corporate social responsibility in the egaming industry?

AD: Yes, we all learn from each other, both from our highlights but also from our failings. The road is definitely paved by the publicly listed companies who traditionally have a long-term vision and interest in sustainability and growth. This is important not just from a player protection perspective but also from a commercial point of view, sustainable gaming is the only way to achieve long-term success.