iGaming Daily

00:00
The All-Party Parliamentary Group for Gambling Reform has reconvened to launch a new inquiry into the future of gambling regulation in the UK. Chaired by Conservative Grandee Sir Ian Duncan Smith, the group asserts that the government must revisit the measures outlined in the Gambling Review White Paper to assess whether they remain effective and appropriate. Duncan Smith's leadership has been welcomed by reform advocates, but the question remains, can this late intervention

00:29
meaningfully influence the course of already agreed reforms. I'm Martin Elliott and welcome to today's iGaming Daily brought to you in partnership with OptiMove, the number one CRM marketing solution for the iGaming industry. And to discuss yet another change in the pathway of regulatory reform in the UK, I'm joined by Ted Orme Clay, editor of SBC News and

00:59
Ted Menviar, SBCC's editor-at-large. So Ted, it's to be joined in the studio here in Manchester by you. How are you today? I'm doing okay. Thank you, Martin. It's good to be back on the podcast, Talking Politics once again. I think if it wasn't for the H1 and Q2 reporting sort of season starting last week or the week before, this would have been like eight or nine politics podcasts in a row, I think.

01:28
I'm glad we're trying to get back on to our winning streak with that one. Excellent. Well, that makes you George Osborne, which must mean that Ted down in London, are Ed Balls. How are you, Oh, God, please. Good, good until that description, but you know I going to say. Would you rather be George Osborne? No, I mean, it seems I'm in a twilight zone and just speaking about politics and taxes, which I think we don't.

01:56
Five podcasts in a row. So yes, welcome to the parliamentary inquiry. Yeah. Yeah. It's, I think since we started iGaming Daily, the most common thing we've talked about has been the white paper into gambling regulation in the UK and the lack of action that's followed off the back of it or perceived lack of action. But anyway, it appears that

02:23
Even the recommendations that haven't yet been enforced are not quite enough for everybody. So here we go. Here we go again with another review, but this one triggered from the back benches. Ted, what's your reaction to this? mean, do we need another inquiry? Are there still sort of loose ends to be tied up, do think? My reaction is that I'm not surprised. And I think that this could

02:51
This inquiry led by Ian Duncan Smith could be the messiest one for UK gambling and UK politics and anyone who's really involved and those stakeholders involved with the gambling review and also what evidence was presented. It also has a potential really kind of spiral out. What we've seen this year is that the kind of boundaries again have been moved to the gambling review and they're allowing kind of local elements and local voices to get in.

03:19
Ultimately, the spotlight falls to the Labour government and whether they're to reopen certain reforms or certain aspects of the review, whether they're going to take that back to the table and what can be done at this late stage. I think the consensus was that they would go forward with it. It appears to be changing kind of every week as to whether the Gammon Act white paper will be re-examined. I think we really are kind of entering kind of the unknown.

03:48
Yeah, and Ted, you're covering a lot of this stuff on SBC News at the minute. What's your interpretation of this? Are you expecting it to generate a lot more noise? I mean, I think I can speak on behalf of the whole of betting and gaming media. And I say that I'm thrilled at the prospect of covering another review after the two and a half years of the gambling act review. I'm me and Ted can both agree that the excitement around that was just not enough. yeah, and now we've got another one.

04:17
Sarcasm aside, be fair, a lot of these political developments are quite interesting. think this was always really a given to an extent, I think, that backbenchers and a lot of people involved in the reform advocacy movement would be re-raising a lot of these concerns and lot of these arguments. I mean, in the immediate aftermath of the Gamblin Act review white paper getting published in April 2023, there were a lot of voices saying that they felt it hadn't gone far enough on certain issues.

04:45
certain issues that had already been quite fiercely debated throughout that two and a half year review itself between 2020 and 2023. So yeah, I don't think it's all that surprising that these arguments being re-raised or that Ian Duncan Smith in particular is the person to be getting involved in taking a bit more of a leadership role in this. He's also been a person who's been very vocal in calling for some more extensive regulatory reforms.

05:15
Yeah, not surprising at all. That's right. I'm intrigued by the idea that Ian Duncan Smith, is very traditional conservative, fairly right wing on the traditional scale, although that right and left thing appears to be being ripped up in politics at the minute, he's being backed on this group by some fairly left wing sort of Corbynite almost Labour MPs. There's also a Green MP. There's a Lib Dem MP.

05:45
They're covering all bases from this. So I'm not, I'm slightly surprised in some ways that they've got this kind of

05:56
Let's call them reformist coalition. If you look into their background a bit, then some of them want to go a little bit further than reform the industry, it's fair to say. But Duncan Smith is a long-term critic of the gambling industry. A lot of this is informed by, he set up a think tank, I think, after he was conservative leader. And the theme of all his research of that think tank has been, has largely been addiction.

06:26
and how that feeds into poverty and how that feeds into outcome for children. And it's not, most of it is drugs, alcohol, that kind of thing. But gambling has obviously played into that as well. what are his concerns, you know, his long-term, the long-term issues that he's been raising? I think when we kind of review Ian Duncan Smith's history with gambling, and one thing is that he has been consistent.

06:55
and consistent on his arguments and where he believes that the reforms need to be seen. And again, you're right to of point out to kind of his social conservative demeanor and kind of status. And I think that that always kind of points to how he sees that gambling should be governed or should be kind of monitored by the government. One area where he's been really kind of pinpointed to that was the exposure

07:25
and the engagement of gambling towards the general public and not just in terms of advertising or sponsorship but the message that it sends across, how kind of it kind of permeates with the youth, younger audiences. So again, he's been very critical of the advertising practices in our industry, targeting the, was also, he had a voice out in terms of the football sponsorships.

07:53
but also that you needed to have consent to target consumers with gambling products. So I think advertising will be that one of them. The other thing is how the industry is governed in terms of its penalties and how it views kind of repeat offenders. He was very, very critical of the old UKGC leadership. And that was one point where he called, I think, in terms of the fallout of the football index.

08:22
But in terms of the penalty, I think he gave to William Hill on his kind of third offense. These are areas that I think he wants severe tightening around. Yeah. So that's interesting. From the outside looking in, you can see why people are think that the bigger operators get away with things at times when you see them penalized again and again. What would a tier one have to do to lose their license is an argument you hear quite a lot on it.

08:51
it becomes quite difficult to push back against that. But I don't think that is quite the focus of this new inquiry. mean, Ted, what are you expecting from this inquiry and why do you think the focus will fall? It's an interesting question. think, well, we've seen a lot of voices lately across the political spectrum, as you noted earlier, Martin, about how this

09:17
this sort of reform coalition is quite broadly represented in terms of political allegiances. There's been a lot of talk lately about local licensing and the abilities of local governments to be, I guess, a bit more confrontational to the industry, to control where shops can be opened up, to control advertising in their local areas. I think we'll see that become quite a big talking point among a lot of the reform campaigners and a lot of the

09:46
These backbench MPs are involved in that. And then on that topic, advertising in general, I think is going to be the big one. These were concerns, again, like I said earlier, go back to way before the gambling app review, particularly around the proliferation of sports sponsorship. Obviously, that's something that the industry and Premier League clubs have tried to address themselves with this voluntary ban on front of shirt sponsorships coming in at the end of next season.

10:14
There's a lot of people who feel that more needs to be done than that given the massive amount of following that football has in the lower leagues as well as throughout other sports, rugby league, darts, boxing, so on. On top of that, TV advertising, social media advertising, I think a lot of these campaigners feel that gambling is just being excessively promoted to a lot of the population and see a lot of societal impacts as a result of that.

10:43
kind of referencing what you mentioned earlier with Ian Duncan Smith and his involvement in research into addictions and how that feeds into poverty. I think, yeah, just to summarize that, I advertising and local powers will be two of the biggest talking points in this and how all of that relates to gambling harm and societal impacts. Yeah, certainly. If you look at the calls for evidence in the paper, gambling, advertising and...

11:10
pretty clear what the direction of travel they're aiming for is because it says the exact wording is, what further steps should be taken on the issue of gambling, advertising, sponsorship and marketing. The idea we've got it right already is not for consideration apparently. There's some other interesting stuff. How to ensure the effective regulation of new and emerging forms of gambling, in particular crypto gambling and social casinos. But perhaps the more eye catching things, they're really asking people to

11:42
look at, review some of the things that are in the white paper in terms of state limits, statutory levy, financial risk checks, how we're going to set up the ombudsman. What do think, Tav? Do you think it has a... We should point out for people who not in the UK that this group has no powers as such. They're making recommendations to the government in this report. Do you think it has the...

12:10
the potential to really sort of either derail the direction that the current government and the former government were moving in, in terms of things like financial risk checks, stake limits and so on. I think, look, here it's important to note that, the APPG has had some influence on the Gannon Review and its reforms and how it was consulted to government. And even if you look at it kind of prior to what it wanted, I mean...

12:37
Okay. It wanted to battle on the things on betting terminals. It introduced a statutory levy that's now being managed by the NHS away from the industry. It won on stake limits on casino games of two pounds. And they won on the affordability checks battle, places that were highly contested by the industry, right? In terms of how it should be applied to the operators and how it you know, it should be launched for the consumer. So the APPG

13:07
has been a part of this white paper and it does have its fingerprints on it. But I think, again, returning to what Ted was saying, that one of the key zones or the points of conflict that has really challenged the Gammon Review is its advertising. Because I think, again, it's seen as kind of the main point of engagement, the highest visibility.

13:35
of any kind of policy that can be carried by the Scambling Review. And I don't think that the reformists are satisfied in that area. I mean, it's the chosen battleground of reformists around the world, isn't it, advertising? Because it gives governments the potential for an easy win. It looks like they're doing something if you suddenly, the advertising on TV is less and so on. But no, interesting to note. So we're just going to go for a quick break.

14:05
And when we come back, we will continue discussing whether the quiet man will continue to roar on the issue of advertising. OK, welcome back to part two of today's iGaming Daily. We are discussing what the all-party parliamentary group on gambling reform. So we've talked about whether this inquiry that the set and I'm coming have any real influence.

14:34
And actually, if you have look on the front page of their website, they've not updated it for about five years. So you can see their list of demand from 2020. They've been really quite successful in achieving this list. What do you think, about which sort of areas are still up for debate or for review? Outside, we've touched a little bit on advertising. Are there other things you think the reformists can hope to get wins on?

15:01
Well, we've got the ongoing rollout of, I mean Ted already mentioned this just before the ad break, but we've got the ongoing rollout of the research education treatment levy that's making a lot of changes to how charity and treatment organisations are funded throughout the country. Obviously the big change there is that the NHS is taking the reigns off of GambleAware really as the main commissioner of fund of

15:28
of fundraising and projects and things like that. There might be, given that that's an ongoing rollout, might be some room for certain political voices to have more of a say over that, particularly given that healthcare and the way the NHS is structured and its role and stuff is a never-ending political debate in the UK anyway. could be some chance for to get involved in this and really link that probably a bit more to a lot of their

15:56
wider discourse about the societal impact of gambling, the exposure of young people to gambling, things like that. Other than that, mean, there's other stuff that's currently being rolled out like the financial risk checks, but that seems like a bit more of a done thing, I think. I don't think there's going to be as much discourse around that as it goes out. Like Ted said, they've already had their win on that one.

16:24
although maybe that will become more of like a cause for them to celebrate, I guess, and use as a good example of how, of what lobbying can achieve maybe. Yeah, there's another interesting point in the calls for evidence. One of the questions I've asked is whether current gambling policy and legislation adequately intersects with wider policy areas such as public health, criminal justice.

16:51
financial services, local government, the economy and taxation. I mean, that's quite a broad topic to list. is how is gambling with the rest of the world? But in amongst the members of this group is a labor MP called Becky Cooper, who recently published a quite interesting pamphlet through the Fabian Society, which was titled A Public Health Approach to Gambling.

17:21
Do you think Ted that maybe that is what this group is after? That gambling becomes, it's been talked about a lot hasn't it? That we should take, we should regard this as a public health issue rather than a business issue or a regulatory issue. Do think there's a chance they might get that approach from the current government? I'm a bit sceptical of whether that will be achieved in terms of framing gambling as a public health issue. I mean that's a very important point to raise Martin, it's one that's been

17:51
that has been called for for quite some time. Obviously we saw the calls for evidence with people appearing, different public health professionals and academics and so on appearing before the APPG earlier this year where it was pretty expressly, that was the overarching agenda I think of framing gambling as a public health issue rather than a business one. Maybe that's something they could achieve further down the line but I don't think that will be the case for some time purely just because the government at the moment is very

18:22
It's been very adamant that it's just committed to seeing out the recommendations of the review of implementing those recommendations and so on moving forward with the consultations. And given all the other stuff the government has on its plate at the moment, just outside of gambling, various things, economics, international politics, foreign relations, all this sort of stuff, a lot of pressure in a lot of different areas as well, I don't think it's going to have the appetite to completely reframe the

18:51
political agenda around gambling, not just yet. No, what do you think, Ted? I think that if the government is going to change course, my instinct here is that it'll be on tax, not on the general sort of safety approach and regulation. Yeah, I think so too. I think we need tax. advertising is kind of viewed as kind of a liability. Maybe that's taken aside, put in for a separate review on that. I also think that there's kind of those concerns about

19:20
the impact of gambling changes with, um, you know, rural activities such as UK race, and that can be seen as well in terms of, you know, treating gambling as, you know, a public health issue. It's been spoken about before, but I mean, guys, we, we're quite, we're quite late in the process now, you know, we're coming up to year five of this. And at one point it has to be settled. The other thing here is that we've already gone through this kind of.

19:47
the merger of the levy going under the NHS. And isn't that kind of fulfilling that kind of public health dynamic, right? That it's absolutely separate. It's now, there's no gray area here. It's separated away from the industry. The other thing I'd just quickly say on the taxation front, think obviously the government have got a prioritising economic growth and part of that is investments and a lot of infrastructure, a lot of projects. So taxation, think is kind of

20:17
They might be viewing this as a double win for them because they can use the industry to raise more money to support the different initiatives they want to roll out. And on top of that, almost in the same way that we talked about earlier, banning advertising and climbing down advertising is an easy win for governments. I guess as well, putting taxation upon the industry is a decent win as well because then they can go back to reform advocates and so on and say, look, we're keeping them in line. We've put taxes upon them and getting more money out of them to...

20:46
invest in health, invest in education, invest in sports and so on. So I think that's kind of like, yeah, they might see that as a win-win. mean, that is true, but the potential contribution from gambling taxes to the public purse, we're in a situation where we're paying out more than a hundred billion pounds a year just in debt interest on the public debt.

21:10
I mean, it's a drop in the ocean. Yes. I think it's reasonable if we're putting tax up across the board for the gambling industry to make their contribution to it. But some of the suggestions we've had about gambling tax going up to 41 % and stuff like that is unworkable, I think. So it'd be interesting to see how tempting that is come the budget, though, for Rachel Reeves because she will need tax raising measures. There's no doubt about that. So just drawing things to a close now.

21:40
A slightly different question. It's slightly bizarre that Ian Duncan Smith, the hero of the conservative right, has also emerged as the sort of figurehead for the gambling reform movement in parliament. And know, backed by, as we mentioned earlier, people from across the political spectrum. Why do you think the gambling industry has failed to come up with its own political figurehead to spearhead its response to these things?

22:08
Okay. No, no, Good question to close out one. And it's one that I've actually been thinking about for, you know, since writing up this article, but I don't think there's ever been kind of a figurehead voice promoting the industry and promoting kind of the intricacies of the industry. And, you know, in terms of taxation, who are employed, I guess we've got the BGC, they've come into play.

22:33
you know, being kind of consistency on messaging, but you do kind of need a of a political voice to someone who has been at Commons. And I know people will say, you know, Michael Duga did that. I think he did that for an extended period, but maybe they needed to transition to someone else. The other thing that I've been kind of observing, especially in the last two years since the publishing of the white paper is how much kind of gambling debates and discussion is about kind of sensitivities towards gambling.

23:03
rather than making sense of gambling regulation itself. It's whether you like the industry, it's whether you like which brands are active, how the licensing, whether you like your betting shop down the street. And we've never been able to kind of move away from that. And I think like a bigger kind of figurehead would have helped create a better platform to debate stuff for the industry. I think that's right. And I'm not sure if you've got an opinion on that, Ted.

23:32
Yeah, I mean think Ted's hit the nail on the head. I do also just think that there's probably some elements of politics and public relations and so on that might make this a bit more of a difficult relationship to forge sometimes. There's often lots of reports in the press, you see in the likes of the Daily Mail and so on, going, shock horror, MPs giving tickets to England game by betting company or something like that.

23:59
And I think sometimes it's just a relationship that's quite easy to get negative press around if it's not managed quite carefully. So that might be another reason why it's been difficult for the industry to get some political figureheads. Yeah, I've always been slightly confused by the notion that if you're campaigning against an industry, that's fine. Whereas if you're campaigning for an industry, it's lobbying and it's a disgrace and it's money changing hands and so on. It seems like it's not quite...

24:29
I'll leave you with one thought. The biggest pure play online gambling company in the world has an extremely large office in Leeds where one of the MPs is Rachel Reeves. It'd be nice if she was the figurehead for the industry, but I don't see that happening.

24:48
But, brilliant. Thank you both for joining me today and thank you again for listening as always and joining us tomorrow for another edition of iGaming Daily.