British Gambling Commission blasts “unacceptable misuse” of gambling statistics  

Gambling Commission CEO Andrew Rhodes says lobby groups are misrepresenting figures to support their own arguments.

UK.- Andrew Rhodes, the chief executive of the British Gambling Commission, has published an open letter blasting the “misrepresentation of gambling statistics” by trade bodies, operators, charities, sports venues and media.

He said the regulator had seen a “significant increase in the misuse of statistics around gambling as different parties seek to make persuasive arguments for or against different proposals.”

Industry lobby group the Betting and Gambling Council often quotes figures from the Problem Gambling Severity Index (PGSI) to support its arguments against reforms or as support for its members’ social responsibility efforts.

This would appear to be the kind of example that Rhodes has in mind, as he wrote that “common misuse of statistics in recent months has been regarding the rate of problem gambling in Great Britain, and the conflation of problem gambling and gambling-related harm.”

He cited statements such as “99.7% of people who gamble do so without being harmed” and “only 0.3% of gamblers are harmed” as examples of the misuse of statistics.

He stressed that problem gambling and gambling-related harm are separate but linked experiences and that there was no one quantifiable measure of either. He said “many have tried to suggest” that the PGSI score is an indicator of the entire UK adult population when it is only of those who gamble.

Last week, there was controversy in the British media about links between a lobby group called the Gamblers Consumer Forum and Steven Donoughue, a gambling industry consultant and former secretary of the All-Party Parliamentary Betting & Gaming Group.

Experts on gambling harm pointed out the false claim made on the GCF website stating that “99.8% of British adults gamble without an issue”. They said the claim was “plainly false” since only around 50 per cent of British adults gamble at all.

Rhodes wrote in his letter that assumptions about “less risky” gambling types are misleading. He said problem gambling rates differ by activity from 0.9 per cent of National Lottery players to 2.8 per cent of offline horse racing bettors and 8.5 per cent of online slots, casino and bingo players.

Rhodes recognised that the overall problem gambling rate is low compared to participation, but said that “beneath the surface of those numbers the picture is more complicated”. As such, he said it was important that data is understood and used properly. He added that the Gambling Commission’s trend data and surveys had been used in misleading comparisons that did not disclose the context of how the data was collected.

Rhodes wrote: “Even with a relatively low proportion of people experiencing problem gambling we must remember that this can and does have catastrophic consequences and equates to hundreds of thousands of people directly affected and a greater number amongst friends, families and others. The debate around gambling is often a fierce one, but nobody is well-served by statistics being misused to further an argument. 

“I therefore ask anyone commenting on this area to take a greater degree of care to ensure they are using evidence and statistics correctly, accurately and in the proper context and with any necessary caveats applied.”

He noted that “opinions on the subject sometimes differ very greatly and can be equally strongly held. Sometimes this can boil over into personal comments and even conspiracy theories as to what a given group, organisation or individual is believed to be seeking.”