Gambling Commission consultation to consider bonuses and free bets

The next round of consultations will include a focus on whether incentives are socially responsible.

UK.- The Gambling Commission’s director of compliance has revealed that the British regulator’s next round of consultations on gambling reforms will include a focus on bonuses and free bets. Mandy Gill told the Bacta Social Responsibility Exchange that the regulator will consider opinions on whether such incentives are socially responsible.

She said the regulator will invite submissions on socially responsible incentives, gambling management tools and regulatory returns. She said the aim was to “ensure that incentives like bonuses and free bets are constructed in a socially responsible manner that does not exacerbate the risk of harm”.

The consultation will also consider whether online deposit limits should be mandatory or opt-out instead of opt-in and will review a possible increase in the frequency of regulatory returns, as well as proposals to remove a number of items.

“We’ll continue to engage and continue to listen to responses to all of our consultations,” Gill said. “We’ll also continue our work to make gambling safer, fairer and crime free, and I thank you all for your assistance and support with this.”

Gill said the Commission had started some pre-consultation engagement for a review of the Gaming Machine Technical Standards. This will include an evaluation of the session limits for Category B and C machines and other safer gambling measures, such as those in BACTA’s Responsible Game Design Code of Conduct.

The Gambling Commission’s first round of consultations post Gambling White Paper attracted more than 3,000 submissions. The consultations dealt with the topics of financial risk checks, cross selling and direct marketing, game design and age verification at land-based gaming venues. Gill noted that the proposed financial risk checks, which have caused controversy in the horse racing sector, will not apply to land-based gambling.

As for the areas that will affect the sector, she said: “Cross selling and direct marketing in land-based premises may not be as prevalent as online operators, but our proposal was to explore improving marketing preferences for all gambling customers.”

As for age verification, she said: “Land-based operators do a good job of verifying that customers are old enough to be allowed to gamble. This consultation asked about increasing the age in which we considered it good practice for staff to challenge customers to verify their age from 21 to 25, bringing this challenge in line with other products such as tobacco and alcohol.

“So should the changes suggested in the consultation or similar changes to those be introduced once we have reviewed the consultation submissions, this would be another key consideration for the sector.”