Survey finds little awareness of safer gambling tools in Britain
A survey commissioned by the Gambling Commission has found that players have a lack of knowledge of safer gambling tools.
UK.- The Gambling Commission has found that players in Britain have limited knowledge of safer gambling tools.
The British regulator revealed that a survey it commissioned from Yonder showed that only 59 per cent of players were aware of deposit limit tools. Only 37 per cent knew about reality check tools and 45 per cent knew about time out features.
As for exclusions and blocking software, 29 per cent of respondents had knowledge of product-level exclusions, 28 per cent knew about blocking software and 40 per cent were aware of payment blocking options offered by banks.
The Gambling Commission said: “It was particularly interesting to see that the awareness of payment card blocking with your bank, which was first brought in during 2018, had higher levels of awareness than some of the more established gambling management tools.”
Use of safer gambling tools
The survey questioned 8,000 respondents in Britain, 4,576 of which said they had gambled in the past 12 months.
It found that only 13 per cent of players had used one of the types of safer gambling tools mentioned in the survey. Younger players were more likely to have used them, with 26 per cent of respondents aged 18 to 24 reporting having used one compared to 4 per cent of over 65s.
Online gamblers used the tools more frequently than people who only used land-based gambling, but, at 16 per cent, the rate was still low. Those who took part in three or more types of gambling were also more likely to use the tools (20 per cent).
The survey found that deposit and loss limits were the most common player protection tool used. These were used by 8 per cent of respondents. Reality check tools were used by 5 per cent, time out features by 4 per cent, product exclusions by just 3 per cent and blocking software like Gamban or Gamstop by just 2 per cent.
The survey only questioned those who had gambled in the last year, so there may be more users who have used the tools to block gambling products for longer.
The survey also asked questions about operators’ terms and conditions. Only 14 per cent of players claimed to have read terms and conditions in the past year. Some 21 per cent said they didn’t know terms were available to read.
Last week, the Gambling Commission reported that gambling participation in Britain fell by 3.5 percentage points to 41.6 per cent in June. At the same time, the rate of gambling-related harm fell to 3.1 per cent.
