Player Protection

GAMSTOP has continued to see an uptick in restorations, as the UK self-exclusion service revealed that 84,000 people signed up over the past year. The highest annual figure since GAMSTOP’s launch in 2018, the figure marks an increase of 5% over the past six months and 6% over the full year, in comparison to 2021 standings.  In total, this brings …

Tabcorp, one of the largest betting and gaming groups in Australia, has become the latest firm to partner with EPIC Risk Management. Enhancing the consultancy’s presence in the Australian betting and gaming scene, the partnership will be based out of Melbourne and focus on delivery of EPIC’s executive training and gambling harm awareness.  This will include its ‘Interactions Masterclass’ programme, …

Kindred Group, ATG and Svenska Spel have published their first ‘key metric report’ on Swedish problem gambling rates and interventions related to their individual businesses. In Autumn 2022, the businesses pledged to openly report on four key gambling harm metrics, with an update provided every six months and presented to Spelinspektionen, Sweden Gambling’s Inspectorate.   A commitment was made to “contribute …

Swedish senior clinicians have highlighted that data-lags are impeding Sweden’s healthcare network from treating problem gambling addiction effectively.  Last week, Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet featured an editorial by psychiatric clinicians citing concerns that the country’s healthcare network required deeper resources to treat and identify gambling harms.  Concerns were cited by Dr Anders Håkansson of the Malmo Addiction Clinic, who cited that …

Ygam will remain active in whatever legislative environment the UK government establishes, according to CEO Dr Jane Rigbye – but that doesn’t mean that the charity doesn’t have a preference. Discussing the Gambling Act review White Paper and its potential outcomes at a recent Parliamentary Reception, Rigbye asserted to MPs – including former Gambling Minister Damian Phillips – that education …

Ygam hosted a Parliamentary Reception this week, featuring speeches from several sitting MPs, including Shadow Education Minister Jeff Smith MP and former Gambling Minister Damian Collins. On the agenda was, unsurprisingly, the forthcoming White Paper on the UK’s Gambling Act review, which will overhaul Britain’s legislation on betting and gaming for the first time since 2005, with the aim of …

The European Gaming and Betting Association (EGBA) has achieved its goal of creating a cross-continental market of harm standard for the betting industry.  Submitted by the trade organisation to the Committee for Standardisation (CEN) just over a month ago, the proposal has now been approved by the European standards development body.  EGBA has long argued that there should be a …

The University of Exeter (UoE) has launched a behavioural, addiction and memory (BAM) study to explore how formative experiences can influence negative gambling behaviours or habits.  BAM study researchers will test ketamine on participants to examine their memories and whether they determine negative outcomes. Ketamine, which blocks a receptor important for learning and memory, is used as a common anaesthetic …

The Betting and Gaming Council (BGC) has defended its relationship with GambleAware by restating that its members have ‘no say’ on how research, education and treatment (RET) projects/initiatives are funded.  On Saturday, the trade body published a Twitter thread denying The Guardian’s report that it wanted to redirect “a quarter of funds” donated to GambleAware to “projects chosen by bet365, …