Gambling Commission: 31% of young people spend own money on gambling
The British regulator has published its annual Young People and Gambling Report.
UK.- The British Gambling Commission has released its 2022 Young People and Gambling Report, an annual study that aims to understand young people’s exposure to, and involvement in, all types of gambling. The regulator says it uses the results to better protect this age group from harm.
This year’s study found that 31 per cent of children (under 16s) said they had spent their own money on gambling in the last 12 months. The vast majority indicated their gambling was legal or did not include age-restricted products. Examples included playing arcade gaming machines, which include penny pusher or claw grab machines (22 per cent), placing a bet for money between friends or family (15 per cent), or playing cards with friends or family for money (5 per cent).
A minority of children stated their gambling was on fruit and slot machines (3 per cent), betting on esports (2 per cent), National Lottery Scratchcards (1 per cent), playing National Lottery online instant win games (1 per cent), placing a bet through a betting website or app (1 per cent), or playing casino games online (1 per cent). The study identified 0.9 per cent of 11-16 year-olds as problem gamblers.
The regulator said: “In this year’s survey, whilst the headline data around regulated age-restricted products is encouraging, there is clearly a group who still struggle with gambling. We are committed to understanding and acting on these findings in more detail to help us, and a variety of other stakeholders, appreciate if and how young people are playing on regulated and non-regulated products, the challenges, and the wider implications.”
It added: “Preventing gambling-related harm is at the heart of our work and we have accelerated our drive to make gambling even safer. Just some of those examples include ramping up our enforcement activity against failing operators, including those who have targeted children, clamping down hard on online slots products, increasing online age and ID verification, strengthening customer interaction requirements, and banning gambling on credit cards.”
UK DfE rapped over data access for gambling age verification
The British data watchdog, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), has reprimanded the Department for Education (DfE) over the misuse of the personal data of 28 million children. Data from academic records ended up being used for age-screening services for gambling.
The DfE had allowed Trust Systems Software, which traded as Trustopia, to access data from the learning records service (LRS), which keeps school pupils’ academic records and is normally only accessible to qualified education providers. It contains the data of up to 28 million young people aged from 14, including full name, date of birth, gender and optionally email address and nationality.
Gambling Commission lifts LEBOM licence suspension
Earlier this week, the Gambling Commission announced that it had lifted its suspension of Lebom Limited’s gambling licence after the operator integrated with Gamstop. The regulator suspended the football prediction and betting operator’s licence on November 3 for failure to integrate with the self-exclusion programme.
Gamstop integration has been a licence condition since 2020. Operators must block players who have signed up to Gamstop. However, the Gambling Commission found that lebom.app had not fully integrated with the system. The Gambling Commission also launched a review under section 116 of the Gambling Act 2005.
