20% of TV and radio advertising have safer gambling messages as well as introducing age restrictions on social media advertisements
Gambling in the UK Gambling has changed significantly in the last 15 years, with advances in technology offering opportunities to gamble online nearly anywhere and at any time.
The Gambling Act 2005 is the basis for almost all regulation of gambling in Great Britain. In December 2020 the Government, led by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, launched a major and wide-ranging review to consider whether the regulatory framework that currently exists is effective and fit for the digital age or whether further protections are needed. As well as consulting with the industry, it has engaged with government, the Gambling Commission, the health and charitable sector, those with lived experience of gambling harm and a range of other stakeholders. It looked particularly at online protections for players and products; advertising, sponsorship and branding; the Gambling Commission’s powers and resources; consumer redress; age limits and verification; and land-based gambling. The BGC fully supported the review as an opportunity to drive further changes on safer gambling and commissioned PwC to carry out an objective, evidence-based review of unlicensed gambling activity 14
Introduction - Gambling in the UK
in the UK2. It looked particularly at the number of unlicensed operators, the accessibility and ability for UK consumers to create an account with those unlicensed sites, their awareness and spend with them, customers’ motivation for using them and how the situation had changed since a similar survey was carried out in 2018/19. The BGC called for the review to be as wide-ranging and evidence-led as possible in order to achieve the right balance – one which meets the needs of an estimated 30 million people who enjoy placing a bet in the UK while also protecting the vulnerable. Concerns have been raised that a blanket approach to reducing gambling, or an over-regulated approach, could force the vast majority of those who currently bet safely onto the black market. This has already started to happen with the number of British people using unlicensed sites doubling in just two years, from 220,000 to 460,000, with amounts staked rising to billions of pounds.
2 PwC-Review-of-Unlicensed-Online-Gambling-in-the-UK_vFinal.pdf (bettingandgamingcouncil.com)
Other European countries are already seeing the results of further regulation in their countries. For example, Norway introduced a state monopoly for all gaming alongside restrictions on stakes, affordability checks and advertising. There is now a black market which accounts for over 66 per cent of all money staked and black market sites’ revenues have more than tripled since 2010. Similarly in France, black market gaming now accounts for 57 per cent of all money staked and revenues for black market sites have almost doubled since 2015. In the UK, as a strict condition of their licence, operators in the regulated industry adhere to high standards including strict ID and age verification checks, no betting on a credit card - except for National Lottery gambling products - and participation in self-exclusion schemes. Regulated operators also offer important safer gambling tools like setting deposit limits and time-outs. BGC members have increased funding for research, education and treatment into problem gambling
and have also committed to ensuring that at least 20% of TV and radio advertising are safer gambling messages as well as introducing age restrictions on social media advertisements.
According to a recent report from the Gambling Commission, rates of problem gambling have dropped from 0.6 per cent to 0.3 per cent of the adult population This suggests that the safer gambling measures which have been introduced recently in the regulated sector have helped the decline in the rate of problem gambling. These have included the requirement in 2014 for remote betting and gaming operators to have licences from the Gambling Commission to serve UK consumers, the reduction in 2019 in the maximum permitted stake on fixed odds betting terminals and the change in law in 2020 when it became illegal to use credit cards to fund remote and non-remote betting and gaming activities in the UK. Introduction - Gambling in the UK
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