© Provided by Z News Service Pavlos Sideris, director of Double Up Media, says the gambling industry underestimates the misconceptions the public h
Pavlos Sideris, director of Double Up Media, says the gambling industry underestimates the misconceptions the public has about how the operators work and the regulations they must comply with.
Gambling misconceptions are widespread throughout the general public, with gamblers and non-gamblers alike ill-informed about how gambling works, how the industry is regulated and the actions gambling operators take to ensure safety.
Education and information are critical, enabling players to make more informed choices, select safe gambling sites, be aware of the risks they run by gambling and for non-gamblers to understand the larger industry. However, many in the industry underestimate them and their effect on the political landscape and anti-gambling sentiment.
The Betting and Gaming Council (BGC) have been particularly vocal, trying to disseminate more information to the general public regarding these points. For them, one of the biggest misconceptions currently informing public perception is the level of harm caused by gambling.
The current rate of problem gambling in the UK is 0.2% and has been falling over recent years rather than increasing, as many in the general public would believe. Moreover, despite anti-gambling lobbyists claiming that the COVID pandemic and cost of living crises would fuel problem gambling, this has not been reflected in the figures.
The UK media and gambling misconceptions
The UK media is instrumental in fanning the flames of gambling misconceptions, framing stories through a lens of loss and destruction, tragic though they remain very low as an average of the population, while the positives of job creation and tax and economic contributions are never mentioned. This is almost exclusively true unless the topic is the national lottery, in which case gambling is acceptable and a form of charity – the irony of the dualism here is not lost on many in the gambling industry.
While it is the media’s job to act as the fourth estate (as famously coined by Thomas Carlyle in 1841), holding the industry and regulators accountable where failings happen, overall reporting is adverse and emotive and concentrates on personal and dramatic stories. The majority of the public exposed to this news often has little gambling knowledge or experience, creating an overly negative view of the gambling industry, with operators described as ready to exploit all players who open accounts with them.
The BGC campaign against misconceptions
In reality, the picture is very different. The Betting and Gaming Council, the trade association for UK gambling operators, educates gamblers and the broader public about safer gambling. The perfect example of this is Safer Gambling week, a cross-industry initiative running every year in October and promoting responsible gambling tools and policies.
Safer Gambling week is a concerted effort to drive awareness and kick-start a national debate. After 2021’s event, the uptake of responsible gambling tools, like deposit limits, increased by 17% compared to the four-week average preceding the event. Meanwhile, the 2022 event created over 30 million impressions on social media (a 21% increase on 2021’s figures).
BGC members also fund research, education and treatment for services that tackle problem gambling with over £100m in funding over four years. In total, BGC members will have contributed over £110m to GambleAware alone by March 2024
Aside from the cases cited above, it’s possible to put forward work on increasing fairness and lobbying for testing standards of games; while the whistle to whistle sports betting advertising ban has reduced the number of children seeing gambling adverts by 97%.
Wagering requirements are another sensitive topic for the gambling sector and as the publisher of NoWagering.com, Double Up Media is committed to sign what it can when it comes to increasing fairness around wagering requirements on bonuses. All of the cited examples are proactive industry measures, rather than being regulator-led. For example, ‘no wagering casinos’ were conceptualised by operators several years ago, but more recently they have also caught the attention of the Gambling Commission.
“Emotions are beginning to run high”
The BGC also found that the 2022 World Cup increased gambling misconceptions. It said that while betting on the world cup is normal for most people, “for a passionate few who harbour an entrenched dislike of betting, it has sparked a torrent of baseless allegations against those who bet and betting operators. It is clear emotions are beginning to run high”.
Between the UK press, anti-gambling lobbyists and the BGC, it’s becoming somewhat of a communications war, with the language used becoming more divisive, which muddies the water even further.
This is demonstrated by the examples given above, but the BGC is also highly aggressive in how it addresses these matters. For example, when discussing the white paper on gambling reform, it referred to new potential regulations as creating a “nanny state”, with all the negative connotations the term brings with it.
While the new regulations have not yet been implemented, the recently released paper clearly aims to ensure those who gamble can afford to do so safely and responsibly. But for the BGC the critical question is whether it is fair to enforce industry-wide financial checks and limits to combat an issue that affects just 0.2% of gamblers.
Conversely, the new measures align with past research in Australia, which has shown that mandatory limits or opt-outs and self-imposed budget limits can be instrumental in assisting gamblers in maintaining a budget.
The industry supports responsible gambling
The gambling industry supports responsible gambling but argues for proportional and fair regulation. Anti-gambling lobbyists make three main requests; an advertising ban, affordability checks and a statutory levy – most of which operators agree with or already have in one form or another.
Unfortunately, the broader perception is that as business owners, operators have an unrestricted interest in profit generation over safety. Let’s be honest, there have been egregious cases of operators abusing players’ VIP status and a multitude of other UKGC fines have been handed out to operators who fall foul of the rules. However, by and large, for those operating in the legal industry, this isn’t true. Sustainable play means longer-term retention and more spending over time. In the words of the newest Gambling Minister, Paul Scully, the aim of creating profit isn’t incompatible with responsible gambling – both can co-exist.
The bottom line
Gambling is an emotive subject, usually reported in a negative framing of loss and destruction and it’s unlikely the gambling industry will ever win the battle for hearts and minds. While it tries to inform more of the population, it’s also doubtful that gambling will ever be portrayed in a positive light, as an understanding of the gambling industry and all the safety measures takes a higher level of experience and industry knowledge. Nonetheless, operators will only achieve their goal of reasonable regulation by promoting information through evidence-led reports, debates and empathy.