UK govt faces pressure from MPs to tighten online gambling regulations

A House of Lords committee is pushing for tighter online gambling regulations in the United Kingdom, as they are concerned people stuck at home during the coronavirus lockdown will run up huge losses without safeguards. 

Less than a week ago, a House of Commons committee said the UK Gambling Commission, charged with regulating the industry, “failed to adequately protect consumers” as business moved online.

The House of Lords Gambling Industry Committee published a report on Thursday calling for stake limits, a slowdown of online play, and a ban on gambling advertising around sports, including on soccer teams’ shirts.

The details of the Committee's recommendations across different areas to reduce gambling-related harm are as follows:

• The gambling industry offers a variety of products to consumers, including some which can be highly addictive. The Gambling Commission should create a system for testing all new games against a series of harm indicators, including their addictiveness and whether they will appeal to children. A game that scores too highly on the harm indicators must not be approved.
• The equalization of speed of play and spin, so that no game can be played quicker online than in a casino, bookmaker or bingo hall.
• The Gambling Commission must explain the minimum steps that operators should take when considering customer affordability, and make clear that it is for the operator to take the steps which will enable them to identify customers who are betting more than they can afford.
• The creation of a statutory independent Gambling Ombudsman Service, modeled on the Financial Ombudsman Service, to settle disputes between gambling operators and gamblers.
• The Government must act immediately to bring loot boxes within the remit of gambling legislation and regulation.
• Gambling operators should no longer be allowed to advertise on the shirts of sports teams or any other visible part of their kit. There should also be no gambling advertising in or near any sports grounds or sports venues.
• Problem gambling is a common mental health disorder, and the NHS has the same duty to treat it as to treat any other disorder. Last year the NHS promised to open 15 new clinics. It should do this before 2023 and establish a comparable number within the following few years.

The lockdown imposed at the end of March to halt the spread of coronavirus has been a boon to online businesses, from retailers to streaming services, and gambling firms are no different -- despite the cancellation of many live sporting events. In June, 888 Holdings said it expected its financial performance to be significantly ahead of expectations, Bloomberg reports. GVC Holdings also said its online business continued to “trade strongly” during the lockdown.

This is what worries some politicians, including members of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party. One of them, Richard Holden, is pushing for a 2-pound ($2.50) stake limit for online fixed-odds games -- matching the limit on machines in betting shops, as well as a tougher regulator.

"We’ve got a regulator with a budget of 19 million pounds last year to regulate an industry with a yield of 11.3 billion pounds in the same period," Holden said Wednesday in an interview. "Gambling should be a social activity: A day at the races or a night out at a casino or the bingo. The real danger comes with unlimited casino gambling from people’s bedrooms or on the bus."

See the full report here.