British Gambling Commission to hold data conference this week

The regulator will invite stakeholders to discuss how to “close the gaps” in knowledge of UK gambling.

UK.- The British Gambling Commission has scheduled a conference for Thursday, March 9, on gambling research and data. It’s invited 150 cross-sector stakeholders from research, academia, the gaming industry and the third party sector to debate how to “close the gaps” in the knowledge of UK gambling.

Gambling Commission director of research and statistics Ben Haden said that there had been an increasing range of research, data sets and ‘big data’ and analytics in recent years and these can be used to better understand gambling behaviour. But he said that some information is still missing.

He wrote in a blog on the regulator’s website: “Let’s be honest – the collective understanding we all have of both general gambling behaviour, the risk posed to consumers, the harms experienced and what industry can do to minimise it effectively is not the sum of these parts. We’re all missing some of the pieces of this jigsaw.”

The conference will begin with a speech from Alison Pritchard, deputy national statistician and director general for data capability at the UK’s Office for National Statistics (ONS). After that, a series of panels, presentations and Q&A sessions will feature speakers from the gambling industry and elsewhere.

Poster sessions from six developing research projects will allow early career researchers “the chance to show some new thinking”.

Haden said: “We know that by having such a diverse range of views in the same room everyone is unlikely to agree on everything. But that’s okay. We are looking for a moment where we can all be honest, reflect on what we don’t know or lack the capability to appreciate and collaborate on what takes us forward the fastest.

“I think the fact that we maxed out attendance for this conference before we even closed RSVPs also shows we’re not the only ones who think getting together to discuss these issues is important. After the day, we’ll be publishing some reflections on the conference as well, but to those of you attending, my team and the Commission are really looking forward to seeing you on 9 March.”

Last week, the Gambling Commission opened a consultation on three proposed changes to requirements that must be met by gambling licensees. They cover an expansion of GAMSTOP and “suicide disclosures”.

The first proposed change is the expansion of the GAMSTOP self-exclusion scheme to more categories of licensees to cover all betting operators, including those that accept bets by telephone and email. This would entail updating the Gambling Commission’s Social Responsibility Code on Remote multi-operator self-exclusion duties.

Second up, the regulator proposes that licensees be required to inform it when they become aware that a customer who has gambled with them has died by suicide. Such suicide disclosures would become a reportable event under operators’ LCCP duties. Finally, the regulator proposes new technical requirements to update its Payment Services Regulations (PSR).

Meanwhile, the regulator has reported that problem gambling in Britain remained at a record low of 0.2 per cent for 2022 as a whole. The results of its latest quarterly telephone survey suggest a drop in the problem gambling rate from 0.3 per cent in the previous year.

The number of gamblers at low risk remained at 1.7 per cent for the quarter ended December 31. There was, however, a “significant rise” in the number at moderate risk, from 0.8 per cent to 1.3 per cent.