BETTER CHANGE
When did we become voyeurs of harm?
Recognition of progress - especially in the fi elds of compliance or safer gambling - is often downplayed or not discussed at all for fear that it will come back to haunt them if something goes wrong. Better Change’s Engagement Director, Rob Mabbett, explains.
I
’d like to start this month’s article with a brief football analogy. For anyone who remembers a decade ago, an ongoing feud between returning Chelsea manager and self-proclaimed “special one” Jose Mourinho and long-term Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger spilt over. It started around 2005 when Mourinho labelled Wenger as a voyeur, citing that he had become obsessed with other teams as opposed to his own, then following some criticism from Wenger in 2014 Mourinho went on to add that Wenger was a “specialist in failure” eluding to the Arsenal managers 8 year run without a trophy and his tendency to defl ect the responsibility for said failure from himself and his team to other external factors. History will remember both individuals as outstanding managers who have contributed a great deal to their sport, but whilst I believe Mourinho’s comments were slightly hypocritical, there was also a great deal of truth in them, and there has been a lasting legacy that many people in football, other sports and indeed business tend to manage expectations rather than projecting confi dence for the road ahead. In football, this would look like a manager
18 MAY 2026
exercising caution when speaking about an upcoming big game, by explaining that fi xture congestion or player injuries may prevent their team from being at their best, thus softening the blow if the result does not go their way. But enough about football! We see it all the time in our industry, too; recognition of progress, especially in the fi elds of compliance or safer gambling, is downplayed or not discussed at all for fear that it will come back to haunt them if something goes wrong.
The challenge we face here is that if we don’t speak up for the industry, who does? There are plenty of detractors out there that have little to no knowledge of gambling or experience working in the space, but their infl uence in public opinion has, without doubt, over the last decade driven policy and led to a much more challenging regulatory and economic landscape. Recent examples of this being fl awed data relating to the prevalence of gambling related suicide which created a harmful “one a day” rhetoric, and also claims of gambling advertising and sponsorship of sport leading to an increase in gambling harm which is unsubstantiated, yet from next season in
the UK premier league whilst regulated gambling companies will not be able to advertise on the fronts of shirts, illegal operators or non-UK licenced operators will, how does that make sense? To counter this, Better Change exists to ensure the regulated gambling industry is judged on its full impact and not just by the voices of harm or by those who see gambling as harmful, but by its positive contribution to people, jobs, communities, the economy and of course, consumer wellbeing. When the industry fails to evidence this value, policy is shaped by a narrow narrative, leading to, as previously mentioned, higher taxes and tighter regulation, but also weakened products and customer offers that ultimately push players towards the unregulated market. This, as well as hurting our businesses, creates greater social and fi nancial harm. These can be seen as external issues that affect our industry, but our obsession with harm is hurting our operation internally, too. Talks at recent conferences, in my opinion, seem to be attempting to rewrite history. Only recently, I heard the gambling industry of 10 years ago being labelled as the wild west! This couldn’t be
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