1XCARE
sports integrity, will be confirmed as the committee’s work develops. Commercial marketing teams have no route into these decisions. The obvious objection deserves an answer before a journalist puts it to me. I chair the committee that scrutinises a programme funded by a commercial brand with which I also work. No assurance about my intentions settles that. Only the record does: audited accounts, disclosed funding, research published in full including findings critical of the industry, and grant outcomes checked against what was promised.
THE EVIDENCE BASE IS ALREADY PARTLY ON THE RECORD
1xCare did not begin from nothing. The four-part player protection research series produced with SBC Media benchmarked protection across Western Europe, Latin America and Africa, with a final edition on player education. Its most instructive finding was uncomfortable. In several African markets, betting is understood as a route to income rather than as entertainment, which changes what player protection has to achieve. That series is why the Research Hub sits first in our funding order rather than last.
FOUR PILLARS, AND WHAT IS COMMITTED Support takes three forms: direct grants to qualified organisations, funded partnerships with academic institutions, NGOs and sporting bodies, and programme development inside the four pillars, each subject to committee oversight before launch. We prioritise regulated markets. Every partnership below remains subject to due diligence, formal agreement and approval. These are commitments, not completed transactions, and the distinction matters more than the announcement.
Research Hub – The pillar funds independent studies into gambling behaviour, addiction risk and the effects of emerging technologies. Three commitments hold for the current period: commission the first research projects with reputable institutions, publish at least one open-access insight report, and establish a small grants programme for academic research. Findings will be published in full under academic freedom terms. This is the discipline the sector most needs and least practises. The industry has a settled habit of deploying mitigation tools without evidence that they reduce harm, then citing their existence as proof of care.
EduCare – Education extends past the individual player to operator networks, affiliates and, most usefully, into sporting settings, which reach audiences that public health messaging does not. The committed work covers scholarship funding for students in addiction studies at partner institutions, sports integrity training delivered with specialist providers, and awareness modules for operators, affiliates and the public. Grassroots tournaments and community workshops are the delivery route, because harm- prevention content performs better where people already gather than where they are summoned.
TechShield – The objective is a change in timing: from retrospective blocking to earlier intervention, using behavioural markers such as sudden shifts in staking velocity or loss-chasing patterns. The committed work is to consolidate existing digital resources into 1xCare tools, pilot behavioural
monitoring and early-risk detection, and build a technology partnership roadmap. Predictive harm detection is not a solved problem. Models generate false positives, and an intervention delivered to the wrong player at the wrong moment corrodes trust in every intervention that follows. Nothing in this pillar launches without legal and compliance review. Support and Well-Being – The fourth pillar funds direct remediation through grants and institutional partnerships to qualified local helplines, clinical psychologists and recovery services. A one-year pilot of a Spanish-language online cognitive behavioural therapy service, aimed at Latin America and Europe, is in preparation subject to final agreement. Help is real only if it exists in the player’s language, inside their treatment system, at the hour they need it. A helpline in the wrong language is a line item, not a service.
WHAT WE ARE NOT CLAIMING
1xCare does not guarantee player safety. It does not, by itself, prevent gambling harm. It does not offer identical provision in every market, while regulation, clinical capacity and language coverage differ so widely. Several of the programmes above are pilots, and some pilots fail. An organisation unwilling to say that in its first year has already told you how it intends to report its second.
THE DATE, AND THE ROOM
Each pillar reports into an annual impact assessment, evaluated by the committee and published. The first Annual Impact Report is due by June 2027, carrying quantitative and qualitative outcomes, an audited financial summary and a statement from the Advisory Committee. We will seek independent external verification where that is practical. The committee holds grant recipients to defined accountability standards, analyses regulatory effectiveness, and lets the findings set the following year’s allocation. Funding bodies announce programmes readily. Rather fewer measure what the money achieved, publish it, and change the allocation when the answer disappoints. Before that report, there is Lisbon. On Wednesday 30 September, Stage 5 hosts ‘The Start of the Journey: Building Trust for Long-Term Success in Player Protection and Safer Gambling’, a session I will moderate within SBC Summit’s Player Protection Symposium. It asks whether safer gambling programmes can withstand independent examination. That is a harder question than most launch panels are willing to put, and it applies to 1xCare as directly as to anyone else in the room.
One disclosure belongs to it. 1xCare sponsors both the track and the session. A platform an organisation has paid for is not an independent examination of that organisation, and I will not present it as one. What a sponsor can do is choose the question, and we have chosen the question most awkward for the sponsor. Anyone who thinks the answer given on stage is too comfortable should say so from the floor. In June 2027 the fair questions will be short ones. What was funded. What was published. What was deployed. What changed for players. We intend to answer all four on the record, because an organisation claiming independent oversight should expect to be measured by its own standard rather than by the sector’s.
GIO SEPTEMBER 2026 15
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108
