Questions have been raised over the direction of the Gambling Commission (GC) in the UK, as it is accused of ignoring any research in its pursuit of stringent affordability checks, or financial risk assessments, depending on which side of the coin you sit.
Peter Marcus, a former Global Head of Gaming Operations for Entain, revealed that he was part of the process during the early stages of the new approach to affordability and stated it was clear that these things were simply unworkable.
He warned that since the departure of Andrew Rhodes as Chief Executive Officer, the GC has essentially stopped listening to industry and to research, marching ahead with a wilful ignorance of the consequences.
Marcus suggested that Rhodes and the GC, under his leadership, had a grasp on the severity of getting affordability checks wrong. However, he now believes that the last two years of research have been ‘a waste of time, as the commission has just pushed ahead regardless’.
There was support from Marcus for stopping people who can’t afford to gamble from being able to do so, but he insisted there are better ways of doing it. He pinpointed the things put out there by Experian, such as ‘checking whether consumers were defaulting on their mortgages, or their credit cards. There are ways to look if people are in financial difficulty. That, in my mind, was the right solution’.
Marcus urged the GC to limit customers who show they are having financial difficulty, with these being the players that should be forced to send documents if they want to gamble more.
He warned that the commission hasn’t been able to force the financial sector to pass over a lot of the information and has therefore tried to come up with a workaround, which will have a crippling effect on much of the industry. The commission has moved to defuse anxiety around the impact of the checks, stating that they would only be implemented for 0.3% of customers.
However, the former Entain lead dismissed this as irrelevant, as a majority of customers only bet £10 a month.
He stated: “We all know the industry is predominantly a high roller industry. A lot of the profit and revenue comes from high rollers, from large players. So it’s going to clearly impact a lot more of those. And the main reason for going to the black market is being asked for documents.
“It just doesn’t make sense, I don’t know what they are trying to achieve. I thought this had gone away,” he lamented, warning that players are going to end up being documented at a very low level.
But for Marcus, this is indicative of a wider issue at the GC, believing it has reverted to old behaviours having shown signs of dramatic improvement.
He did, however, reserve praise for those who have leaked elements of the research, as it has enabled the industry to see that evidence is simply being ignored and there is little to support this new approach to affordability.
Marcus praised Rhodes and Kate Perry, but recalled that there were prevalent voices at the table representing the Commission who were essentially anti-gambling campaigners.
“We are heading down a similar path to Germany and the consequences there have been dire, with around 60% of online gambling taking place on the black market. That is not something that we want to see in the UK, but if the government continues in its path of stringent restrictions, that is where we are heading.”
The absence of leadership
Marcus also expressed grave concerns that the GC is moving UK gambling into a major change without adequate leadership in place, as a successor to Rhodes is still to be appointed.
“If there’s no CEO in that place, how can they put one of the biggest policies that can come out? Far bigger than the white paper, by the way. It is far bigger than the white paper. How can you possibly have this type of policy coming out without a CEO in place, properly in place, to take full responsibility of what he’s doing?
“Any company, any large PLC would not be able to make massive decisions with an interim CEO. The board wouldn’t let them. No. How can the board of the GCs allow this?”
It intensifies pressure on mid-tier and smaller operators, with Marcus warning that he knows it will spell trouble for some.
“I suspect they had to work on the tax increase rather than anything else. And how much more? How much more do you want to keep on piling on them? “
The Betting and Gaming Council (BGC) has fired back against the likely consequences of affordability checks, and it was their voluntary agreement that Marcus cited as an alternative and more effective solution to player safety.
Grainne Hurst, Chief Executive of the BGC, has expressed ‘deep disappointment’ at the move to implement the new affordability checks.
She said: “The Commission has failed to address the fundamental issues identified during its own pilot. It has not demonstrated that the data underpinning these checks is accurate, reliable or consistent enough to support regulatory decisions affecting customers.
“The pilot exposed inconsistencies in the information returned by credit reference agencies, with the same customer potentially receiving different outcomes depending on the provider. Customers risk being wrongly identified as financially vulnerable based on a system that remains unproven. That is not a sound basis for regulatory intervention.
“The Commission has yet to publish a full evaluation of the pilot, so neither the industry nor the public has seen the evidence needed to justify introducing these checks.
“These checks cannot be described as genuinely frictionless if they produce unreliable outcomes, lead to unnecessary account restrictions or ultimately result in customers being asked to provide documents or open banking information.”
