BETTER CHANGE STATESIDE As a product head, I was judged on my commercial
success, but at no point did I ever sacrifice the safety of my players to achieve my objectives. Quite the contrary. I saw looking after my players as not only best practice and a way to offer the player a great experience, but it was a solid commercial opportunity as well. It’s no secret that the more we did, the less likely we were to find ourselves at the sharp end of a hefty fine which was always at the back of my mind. Let’s also be clear, no operator wants someone suffering gambling harm on their books; it’s just not good for business. Each time I took an innovative suggestion to the team, it
was wholeheartedly supported to the point that we would model the concept, dedicate teams to refining the methodology to ensure we had the greatest chance of making it a success and would ensure it had a place on the board meeting agendas. Once we were confident of its success, we would approach the relevant regulatory bodies to engage them with our plans in the hope that we might get their blessing (and maybe even their commendation) for investing so heavily in strategies to ensure the optimum level of player protection. It probably won’t be that surprising to hear that the most common response was some warm words but a caveat that their official position was that nothing could be endorsed and that should it fail, we would still be liable for a fine. It’s also not surprising that faced with that kind of response, most boards would decide to divert their resources to more concrete projects. Risk aversion is one of the reasons I think we’ve lost the
passion of operators to think outside the box and really focus on player protection. One board member at a prestigious operator told me just last week that they would love to work with us but quite frankly, after years of being damned if they do, damned if they don’t, they’ve just decided it’s easier (and cheaper) to just do the bare minimum. They now divert their RET payments two of the big names because they know the regulators approve but they don’t ask for any accountability and just don’t care how the funds are spent. They have no interest in supporting any ‘pet’ projects because, after years of doing just that, it resulted in them still being told they weren’t good enough. This attitude astounds and worries me. For many
operators, obligations such as RET require six or seven- figure cheques being written and yet there seems to be little interest in where, or how the money is being spent. In a business where it wouldn’t be unusual for the office manager to be questioned why HB pencils were ordered as opposed to generic ones, it’s mad that the same scrutiny isn’t being applied to regulatory funds. Whatever I’m procuring, I want to understand what value
I’m getting. Better Change has two charitable projects that we’re currently working on with funding from the RET scheme but each partner who has generously supported us knows exactly what each pound of their donation is being allocated to. We’re fully transparent about our management fees, (which are negligible and currently aren’t even getting us to break even - but that’s for another article!) our project deliverables and the exact impacts we anticipate achieving. Throughout the project we keep our partners updated and value their input if they have the capacity and inclination to be more involved. Finally, we
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ensure they are presented with a full and independent evaluation report at the end of the project they have funded. The Psychologists in our clinical team confirmed what we
already knew – people are more likely to go above and beyond for the people and projects that they feel passionate about. This is exactly what Better Change hopes to achieve by making each project as bespoke as possible to ensure maximum accountability for the use of the funds we are granted. Hopefully this in turn reignites their interest and desire to go above and beyond when it comes to player protection.
So what can we do to change this? We need to move away from the risk-adverse mindset that the industry has fallen into and allow some of the smaller, newer and leaner organisations to show what they can do to improve the space. It’s these agile organisations, without massive overheads, who can deliver real bang for each buck and offer true accountability. We need to ensure that all recipients of charitable funding
are fully accountable for the funds they are provided and are as transparent as possible. We need to see true collaboration with complimentary
organisations really focusing on disrupting the status quo and striving for a better experience for both the player and the operator. Better Change is part of one such collaboration with Gordon Moody and Mindway AI, as our trio endeavours to deliver the first global network which aims to curate all things safer gambling related into one, simple, reliable and easy-to-access location for anyone to access. Finally, we need to see innovation as something to embrace
and not be feared. As long as proper due diligence can be demonstrated, credit should be given where credit is due.
Photo by Riccardo Annandale on Unsplash
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