BETTER CHANGE Евгений Бордовский/Adobe Stock
Safer gambling initiatives matter
Erica Young expands on last month’s column to dive deeper into the importance of working collaboratively
L 28 AUGUST 2022
ast month my colleague at Better Change, David Richardson, talked about the importance of working collaboratively if we are to make real inroads into reducing gambling harms. I want to build on that theme this month. We’ve come a
long way since the Gambling Act 2005 was passed in the UK, and the principle established that gambling operators should fund research, education and treatment into problem gambling (AKA ‘RET’). Few in the industry would dispute that gambling can be a risky activity for some, and that player protection is critically important. Safer gambling initiatives matter, and the way to maximise their impact is for everyone with an interest in safer gambling to work together. Is it time to be more fl exible and imaginative in how the ‘RET contribution’ is perceived, defi ned and measured? Time to broaden the regulatory requirement to encompass a wider range of interventions? And time to get joined up in our thinking and in our doing? I think it is.
There’s a widespread commitment in the UK gambling industry to contributing 0.1% of Gross Gaming Yield (GGY) to RET, with some of the big beasts in the online space already committed to increasing this to 1% within a few years. There’s an expectation that the whole industry will move towards this level of contribution. Now that’s potentially a whole lot of money. The Gambling Commission’s Industry Statistics for 2019/20 (the last period pre-pandemic) say that total industry GGY was £14.1 billion, so that would give an annual target of £141 million in RET contributions. The last published year’s actual donations totalled £25.6 million, so there’s a long way still to go to hit that target. I’m all in favour of the industry paying more to avert and deal with gambling harm, but I think it’s time to think again about what these contributions can pay for. RET is the shorthand that was adopted way back
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