Kindred weighs in on British gambling review

The operator has sent an open letter to two parliamentary groups to make the case for using evidence from the gambling industry.

UK.- Kindred Group has sent an open letter to the British government’s All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Gambling-Related Harm and Peers for Gambling Reform calling on them to accept the use of industry evidence in debates on the future of British gambling legislation.

In the letter, Kindred used its own activity as an example to demonstrate how the gambling industry can provide accurate data to inform debate on gambling regulation. It notes that it took the decision to start reporting the percentage of its revenue derived from problem gamblers.

It also rubbished claims that more than 60 per cent of gambling profits come from the 5 per cent of at-risk gamblers. Rather, it argued that gambling companies have a financial incentive to prevent harm and said that claims that gaming operators use exploitative business models “fundamentally misunderstand the economics of listed gambling operators”.

Its own statistics show that by Q3, its revenue from harmful gambling had fallen to 3.3 per cent, although it rose to 4 per cent in Q4.

Kindred’s general manager for the UK Neil Banbury said: “Our data shows that the risk profile of revenue on higher spending accounts is significantly lower than the risk profile of lower spending accounts, indicating that the narrative of higher levels of spend automatically equating to higher levels of harm is not accurate. 

“Our data also indicates that tailoring measures according to risk profile (rather than applying blanket fixed measures) helps ensure low risk customers are not needlessly pushed outside safer licensed environments.

“Working with partners on affordability, Kindred Group has been able to reduce the revenue from potentially financially vulnerable accounts to below 1%.”

Kindred’s letter comes as the gambling sector continues to wait for the publication of the UK government’s delayed gambling white paper, which is expected this spring.

Meanwhile, Kindred has refused to stop offering its services in Norway despite the threat of fines from the national gambling regulator, Lottstift.

The regulator has warned that the group’s Trannel International subsidiary will be fined NOK 1.2m (€120,000) a day if it doesn’t withdraw its online gambling offering in the country.