Gambling affordability checks: Gamban co-founder supports call for horseracing exemption
Matt Zarb-Cousin says he agrees that horseracing betting should be treated differently.
UK.- The UK horseracing sector has found a perhaps unlikely supporter for its stance against the imposition of affordability checks on betting. Matt Zarb-Cousin, the director of Clean Up Gambling and co-founder of the gambling block tool Gamban, has argued that betting on horses should be exempt from the measure, which is intended to prevent excessive gambling.
Zarb-Cousin said he agreed that horse racing was less risky than verticals like online slots and suggested that the sector should be treated differently and also aim to distance itself from other forms of online gambling. He said horse racing “needs to get as far away as possible from online casino” which he said is “bringing the industry down”.
He told the Barstewards Enquiry podcast: “My argument, and it has been a consistent argument, to those involved in advocating on behalf of racing is, the fact racing has not been able to extricate itself from online casino has meant it’s been caught up in these kinds of regulations.”
He added: “If racing was to delineate from the current online casino and slots operations, if it was a separate licence or a separate platform, we wouldn’t be having a situation where racing could be subject to affordability checks. It would be a completely different risk profile in terms of the products.”
The British Gambling Commission introduced a pilot of financial risk checks for online gambling in August, with deeper checks for players who deposit more than £500 in a month. From February, checks will be introduced for those who deposit £150 or more. However, the horseracing sector has argued that many who bet on horses place larger bets are are likely to be put off by the checks, seeing them as intrusive.
Racing Post has warned that the measures risk exasperating the financial crisis in the horseracing sector, which has already been affected by an online decline in online betting turnover. The Jockey Club fears that financial risk checks could cost the horseracing industry more than £250m over the next five years.
Zarb-Cousin criticised the Gambling Commission’s approach to affordability checks. He said: “It’s not prescriptive enough and that’s a big problem because what ends up happening is you get this very sporadic implementation of this idea of affordability checks where one operator will ask for a certain amount of information while another operator will ask for different information, a different loss threshold.”
He added: “I don’t like the way the industry conducts them and this is why we’ve campaigned for a much more prescriptive set of rules that would govern how operators have to carry these out and the circumstances and situations in which they are expected to do so. We’ve seen very, very intrusive checks that have not been effective and, from my perspective, the problem is in the way the Gambling Commission regulates.”
