REPSONSIBLE GAMING
compliance reality that’s based on rational measures or nuanced approaches. They have a good working framework in place, they have good, consistent measures for player protection, they are very active educating in schools. Education is important so that when the next generation of gamblers come to the operators, they already understand what RG means and what is safe for gambling. In general, I think the terminology around Responsible Gambling is a bit outdated, and we need to decouple safe gambling from problem gambling. If we send an RG message to a customer they will tend to think it’s not for them because they don’t have a problem. We have to deal with the stigma with RG and that means we have to focus on safer gambling. That is the desired outcome and education is a fundamental part to understand that safe gambling is part of the experience. It’s a safety measure. We have to get the message over: let’s buckle up so we can have some fun. We have a company-wide commitment to derive zero revenue from harmful gambling from the board up all the way to the customer facing individuals and so on. This has been part of our DNA for over a decade. We are very transparent in what we do, and we have a three pillars or focus areas: academic, community and customer focus. We started collaborating with researchers over 10 years ago when academic collaborations were unheard of, and today we use a risk averse approach, rather than blanket approaches and so on. In practice this means that we have a very sophisticated detection system which enables us to detect early signs of harmful gambling behavior. We believe that proactive prevention is better than the cure. When we look at the gambling spectrum, we have social gamblers, regular gamblers, problem gamblers, and addicted gamblers. Operator want their customers on the regular gambling part of the spectrum. So when they start showing signs of harmful gambling behavior, our early detection system makes an intervention and stops the progression further along the spectrum towards problem gambling behavior. The intervention is crucial, because that is the point where we can still nudge the player towards positive gambling behavior by education.
We measure the success of our system, and we openly report harmful revenue every quarter. We also report a health index. We record the effectiveness of every intervention: what was the intervention? Did it work? What was the outcome of the intervention? And we continue to evaluate in this. There is some fluctuation in the numbers but the health index is high, which means that when a customer is detected, our intervention was effective, meaning that they did not get detected again. We also try to the extent we can, to maintain some communication with the player. There are different risk levels with different communications and different communication channels. At the lowest risk level, we send perhaps a pop up, a friendly nudge. If they are detected at a higher risk level, we might call and speak with the customer. Then at the highest risk level we take restrictive actions, ranging from setting limits based on their affordability to limiting their ability to deposit completely. For me, maintaining communication with the players is very important. We know about self exclusion and it is an important tool in the regulatory toolbox. But there’s another form of exclusion: not self-exclusion, but exclusion by the operator. This seems intuitively like a good thing to many people, but when you think it through, there is a big risk. Exclusion means the end of the communication with that player. Now, of course, there are instances where it comes to a point where you have to actually take that measure, but that does not mean the problem is now solved. Exclusion is not the end of the story. There should be other measures then combined, Ultimately, success means that we have the ability to make interventions, to measure the effectiveness of those interventions and to provide a safe and trusted environment for our players. We have systems in place for that, but I think a much bigger success story is the whole evolution of RG, the way it has evolved and gained sophistication with the use of standardized markers of harm, with detection systems, with the knowledge that we have. Not only that, the evolution of the detection systems, has been quite rapid. We are continuously upgrading our systems as well to catch up with the technological demands.
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IMGL MAGAZINE | DECEMBER 2024
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