iGaming Daily

Charlie Horner (00:01.379)
It's European Safer Gambling Week 2024 and as always it generates a host of educational activities and debate as the regulated industry's key players double down on their commitment to make this sector as safe and sustainable as possible. Safer gambling is also the topic of today's iGaming Daily as we look back on last week's SBC Digital Player Protection Conference and examine some of the issues that came out of the discussions. I'm Charlie Horner and I'm joined by Steve Hoare.

editor of the Player Protection Hub and SBC Leaders Magazine, and Martin Elliott, project director for SBC Media, to talk all things safer gambling. Martin, Steve, how's things?

Steve Hoare (00:44.313)
Yeah, good thanks Charlie. I think this, I'll talk about it soon, but I think this has been quite an epic, say, for gambling week. I'm sensing a turning of the tide with regards to player protection, but I'll talk more about that in a sec.

Martyn (00:59.442)
Yeah, excellent. Very well, thank you, Charlie. I'm delighted to say this is the first time I've been on an episode of iGaming Daily, and we're now 300 and something episodes in, with a fellow panelist who is older than me. So that's a landmark appearance. Yeah.

Steve Hoare (01:17.051)
Thanks Martin, you haven't been trying hard enough frankly. There's plenty of people involved in the industry who are older than I am.

Martyn (01:23.929)
Yeah, we need to have a word with the bookers to make me feel younger, really too.

Charlie Horner (01:29.829)
Wow, that's not the angle that I thought we were gonna go down first, but yeah, great. Just before we dive into the main topic, I should remind everyone that iGaming Daily is sponsored by OptiMove, the number one CRM marketing solution for the iGaming market. And as a special offer, OptiMove are offering new clients a free first month when they buy OptiMove. For more information and to claim the free month, go to optimove.com forward slash SBC.

Martyn (01:35.098)
Heh.

Charlie Horner (01:58.005)
We'll also leave the links in the podcast episode description. Okay, so to begin then, Martin, please could you just briefly introduce us to the SBC Digital Player Protection Conference. What is it and how does it work?

Martyn (02:18.386)
Sure, we have the SPC Digital series of online conferences which run not quite monthly, we have about 10 a year. Each year in November we run one that is focused very much on player protection the week before Safer Gambling Week. Now lot of Safer Gambling Week is about...

educating consumers and getting the message out about safe play. Our conference is slightly different. It's about sharing knowledge between the operators and between bringing together some sort of outside experts and so on as well to talk about some of the key issues. So we had...

speakers from the likes of Flutter, Bettson, Fitzdares, Bet Nation and so on. And then they were augmented by some leading academics. I'm sure anyone who's taken any interest in the safer gambling space at any point in the last 20 years would know Professor Mark Griffiths, who is one of the leading researchers in the world.

backing those people. have a couple of people from EGBA who are obviously the organizers of Safer Gambling Week. And then some interesting people like Simon Vint from Casino Guru who is trying to establish a global self-exclusion program which is an interesting and ambitious project.

It was really interesting actually, I think this was the best digital event we've done so far in terms of the quality of the discussion and the openness of the discussion. Sometimes you can get speakers on who are very guarded, they've been told a lot about, told by their...

Martyn (04:09.106)
corporate affairs and media people to say things that are quite safe. But they were really open, the people who spoke this time, open about flaws, open about where they can collaborate more. So some really interesting discussions. And the benefit of it being online is if you've missed it, you can still sign up and go back and watch any of the sessions whenever you like.

sure we can leave a registration link in the show notes.

Steve Hoare (04:41.487)
Yeah, it's interesting what you see.

Charlie Horner (04:41.519)
Absolutely we will do, yes.

Steve Hoare (04:45.765)
Sorry Charlie, was just going to butt in there and follow up Martin's point about the openness of the people that were taking place in the player protection day. I think that has been reflected across the industry in numerous webinars and on stages, conference stages taking place in real life this week. Now I might have been drinking the safer gambling Kool-Aid but I...

Martyn (04:45.979)
So go. Yeah.

Charlie Horner (04:50.8)
Absolutely.

Steve Hoare (05:13.335)
I of think that there's been a bit of a turning point with... So the gambling commission CEO last week, Andrew Rhodes, did his annual update to the industry, to CEOs, and obviously broadcast to the rest of the industry through the likes of SBC News. And he was saying that it's not really a case of...

operators not complying anymore, but more a case of kind of speeding up and learning best practices and processes. And that struck me as quite an interesting change of tone. And I think that's reflected in a lot of people being a lot more confident that they're doing the right thing, that they are working together, that they are trying to protect players.

as best they can. And I think when you hear people talking about things like the black market, when you hear people talking about things like some charities and pressure groups advocating for non-collaboration, I think there's a new willingness to talk about difficult topics.

because people are confident in the place they're coming from.

Charlie Horner (06:47.725)
No, absolutely, I think that's really, really interesting and it's a benefit to the audience, it's a benefit to the panellists that we can have those open discussions, particularly with a topic as important as player protection. Now, Steve, you're SBC's resident player protection expert as the editor of the Player Protection Hub and you moderated one of the sessions last week. Could you give...

our listeners a bit of an overview about the session and some of the key points of what was discussed.

Steve Hoare (07:19.673)
Yeah, so my session was particularly focused on collaboration between operators and whether this is the next stage, I guess, in player protection. And I think we found out very much that it's been happening for a while, of course. Flutter's head of safer gambling, Luke Sugden, was on the panel. And he was very keen to talk about Gamprotect, which is

kind of the next level in self-exclusion and data sharing. There's a core group of five or six operators who have been trialing this over the last couple of years whereby they will share information on players that have excluded from their site with others. So it's different to Gamstop in that you don't...

because you can register with Gamstop and you're excluded from every one that's licensed, but you can just register with William Hill, for example, if you just bet on William Hill, but there's nothing to stop you from going to Bet365 and gambling there. Unless, of course, William Hill tells Bet365 that you've registered for self-exclusion from them, which is the point of Gamprotect. So that's...

been going for a couple of years. Luke described how the data protection teams from these select group of operators are now best friends, which has got to be a good thing. When the lawyers and data protection people are best friends, then surely good things are going to happen. So that was kind of one point.

and now they want to expand, they're kind of inviting the rest of the licensed industry to take part and that I think has been a bit slower because it's just something extra to do, right? And it's not compulsory yet, although the gambling commission would obviously encourage it. So there was that. And then Luke was talking about how the gambling commission would very much like them to take the next stage, which is

Steve Hoare (09:41.593)
is possibly not just sharing when customers have self-excluded, but sharing when they've exhibited signs of markers of harm. And that's a really tricky thing for people to come to agreement on because the definitions of markers of harm can vary between anyone, between operators, between academics, whatever. So first of all, you need to define.

markers of harm, which is where another panellist came in with an interesting point. Martin Hire of the European betting and gaming association is working on a project with the European Commission to standardise markers of harm, which of course if there is a European wide standardised

definition in Markzahamn makes that job a hell of a lot easier. This is something actually that it's with a body called the European Standardisation Committee. I'm not actually sure if that's in the EC or where it sits in the Brussels bureaucracy, but interesting the UK is still a member of that. when that's...

And it's not a law, it's a voluntary thing, but when it's published next year, operators across Europe would be able to adopt these same markers of harm. So that's quite a good example of A, operators working together, and then the organization sort of working with other organizations outside the industry, because it's the European.

bureaucracy that needs to work on these things rather than just the industry.

Martyn (11:42.854)
Yeah, that's...

Charlie Horner (11:42.969)
Absolutely. I think it just goes to show that need for collaboration, standardisation and where those two meet really because there needs to be standardisation for that collaboration to happen and everyone to agree on it. Martin, I just wanted to come over to you briefly and see if you had any highlights from the day. Was there any sessions or speakers that particularly stood out to you?

Martyn (12:08.882)
Yeah, well actually the discussion Steve was just talking about was really fascinating, really interesting to see. just one additional point on that is that one of the big multinational operators, they identified of hundreds of potential markers of harm within their system. And then to run alongside their system, they brought in a third party software as well, which...

which uses some different marks of harm and found a whole different group of people who might be at risk of a gambling problem. So the task of standardizing markers of harm across...

every operator and something that will be relevant to every player and catch every player is unbelievably complex. So good luck to the people on that European Commission. I do know the guys in particular from Egber who are part of the, they won't make the final decisions but they have input and they've been working very hard on this project doing some fantastic things there.

Steve Hoare (13:10.011)
You

Martyn (13:27.002)
One of the other things that stood out for me was we had discussion about messaging and so on and crafting the perfect safer play messaging. But one thing that came out in that discussion, which was not entirely relevant to that topic, was that messaging for young people. And one of the panelists pointed out that on Roblox, I believe it's called, kids as young as seven are...

able to go play roulette and bingo style games. Not for real money, obviously, because they're seven, that would be ludicrous. But as someone who isn't a parent, I was really shocked that there's something that blatant with children that young in there. And it did make me think a little bit. Every time we get a set of statistics,

about levels of gambling disorder or gambling addiction, if you want to term that. There's also a big section that says how many minors have been exposed to gambling harm and so on. And for the general public, and I know because I've had this discussion with people who don't work in the industry, they assume that those figures mean that young people have been gambling with the gambling industry, who...

They have a very narrow view of what the gambling industry is. It's bet 365, it's Skybet, it's Labbrox, it's William Hill, it's BetThread. That's it. Now the reality is, without the connivance of parents, it's almost impossible for children to put a bet on with any of those regulated operators. So that means something else is happening. And it's probably, I know we do talk about things like loot boxes in video games and so on.

But young people are being exposed to gambling in a number of settings. And we need to think carefully about education. I know...

Steve Hoare (15:32.923)
Yeah, think it was a really, really fascinating conversation. It's quite shocking. But also, I guess young people are shooting lots of baddies online, and they don't necessarily go and pick up a gun and go and shoot people in real life. But the difference, I think, as I worked through this in my head afterwards, was that...

If you're playing roulette online for fun...

The direct link from that is playing roulette online for money. Whereas just because you're shooting people online, you can't shoot people online in real life if you know what I mean. So it's that kind of direct causation, which I guess is the danger. And again, though, this comes back to the collaboration topic. And it's about teaching, yes, and it's about educating.

Martyn (16:11.984)
Yeah.

Martyn (16:18.608)
Yeah.

Steve Hoare (16:36.933)
customers, educating the wider public, educating children and that needs everyone involved and that was another topic that came up wasn't it in that session about the pressure groups, charities, third sector, parts of the Department of Health who are advocating for not collaborating with the industry which has always seemed to be

Martyn (17:00.209)
Mm.

Steve Hoare (17:05.893)
bar me to me to be honest, for no other reason than how are you meant to research anything properly if you're not actually collaborating with the people you're researching on.

Martyn (17:16.198)
Yeah, absolutely. It's the same as big accountancy firms hiring people from HMRC to work out what the best tax avoidance is. The best researchers are always going to be working with commercial partners because there is more funding than if you work in the public sector. And there are one or two exceptions to that, but it's generally that.

Martyn (17:45.35)
I don't want to be too dictatorial in this stance, but I think the idea that the NHS and charity shouldn't work with gambling operators to improve, to improve provision, to improve research is barmy, frankly.

Steve Hoare (18:00.187)
think we both used the same word there, Martin.

Martyn (18:01.947)
did we? Excellent. Yeah. Yeah.

Charlie Horner (18:05.043)
Great. let's talk about some practical tips that we can take away from the session because as Martin was saying at the top, we want to try and open up the debate and educate people and open up that forum, but we also want people to take away things that they can implement into their work. So, Martin, we'll come to you first. Did you have any sort of

practical tips that you took away and thought, wow, that's something that operators could be implementing.

Martyn (18:38.698)
Well, it might be something that operators have implemented but may want to rethink a little bit. So if you speak to any operators about this, they're all absolutely correct when they say when you need to have an intervention, when somebody's hit a marker of harm, emailing them is a waste of time. If you phone them, they're probably not going to answer. So they've all come to this, the conclusion that they use pop-up messaging and they think it's really effective.

And they've done they've done research to back it up. They haven't just pulled this idea that it's effective out of the air but Mark Griffiths Was saying that his research suggests something different that it's it's not that effective and in real life situations If you test it in a more of a laboratory type situation, it does look effective

but he sort of hinted that this might be a bit of a misstep. Although he wasn't saying that as criticism because he's very much of the view that all operators should have multiple types of tools to intervene and to spot signs of problem gambling and so on. And I don't think he said it doesn't work full stop, but I think his message was very much.

it's probably not as effective as you hope it is going to be.

Steve Hoare (20:03.129)
Yeah, I spoke to Mark after the session actually, because I wanted a bit of clarification on that point and he pointed me towards a couple of his papers on the subject. And while he's not saying they don't work, I think the message that he would like to see heard is that they have to be carefully crafted. It's about getting the tone right and so on.

And I think his point also is that there needs to be more research done into what that tone is and it needs to be done in real life settings, not just as you say, in the lab.

Martyn (20:36.591)
Yeah.

Martyn (20:43.802)
Yeah, yeah, it'd be interesting to see, and this will still be early stage stuff, but.

Theoretically, artificial intelligence can be trained to deliver personalized messages which will hit the very specific circumstances of players and based on their playing history and so on, give some examples. But we're probably a little way off that it being safe to run that out in full across an operator with a million customers, for instance.

The potential is there in the technology to really improve this stuff and the will is definitely there from the operators as well.

Steve Hoare (21:27.481)
Yeah, yeah. I've got one other very practical tip, because you were just about to ask me, weren't you, Charlie? it's simple. Join GAMP Protect, because as far as I'm aware, only six or seven operators have done so thus far. And there's 100-odd plus, I don't know how many licensed operators there are in the UK. But there's a

Charlie Horner (21:35.33)
Indeed I was, yes. One step ahead.

Martyn (21:36.316)
Yeah.

Steve Hoare (21:55.547)
hell of a lot more. yeah, join Game Protect. I'm told it's not that difficult.

Charlie Horner (22:00.613)
Fantastic. Well, Steve, Martin, we could talk about this all day and I'm sure we will do in the future on the next SBC Digital Player Protection Day. But for all listeners, thanks for joining us. If you do want to go back and watch some of those sessions on demand, I'm sure there will be a link in the description. We also have a whole range of player protection content.

going out on SBC News across the portfolio and of course on the Player Protection Hub. Thanks for listening and join us next time on iGaming Daily.