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The United Kingdom Gambling Commission (UKGC) has made its intentions clear over recent years, with the protection of players being an absolute priority, and various research being carried out to enhance the Commission’s ability to do so.The UKGC has announced the start of a new research that will study specific gambling products to ascertain the risk and possible harm they can cause.
Important role
The UKGC has made it clear on multiple occasions that they expect operators and gambling companies to do what is necessary to protect vulnerable players, and in talking about the new research, the UKGC’s programme director, Ben Haden, repeated this expectation, saying:“Our strategy sets out our commitment to preventing harm to consumers from the risks gambling can pose. Success of this relies on growing our evidence base to better understand the types of gambling products and services that present more of a risk of harm to consumers than others.“Gambling firms have an important role to play in achieving this as they hold comprehensive data that is vital to this research. It goes beyond simply analysing the data which is already reported to us by operators and we will be encouraging the industry to get involved.”
Comprehensive study
The UKGC are working with GambleAware and the Responsible Gambling Strategy Board (RGSB) on the research, with GambleAware’s Director of Research, Clare Wyllie, saying:“GambleAware is pleased to be working with the Gambling Commission and the Responsible Gambling Strategy Board on a project that will help us to better understand gambling behaviour across different products and to know what characteristics are most strongly associated with harm – focusing on the online sector in the first phase and moving onto other sectors in subsequent phases.“For the first time, we will be able to look comprehensively across the gambling industry to understand where the risk of harm lies.”