The online gambling market has been thriving in recent years, but that is an era that might face changes soon. The British government could be preparing to implement new restrictions onto online gambling platforms in line with their objective to limit harmful gambling. Business owners on the market are sceptic to the effectiveness.
The potential new policy would be similar to the one implemented on physical gambling business in 2018, which limited the maximum stake limit on electronic slot machines drastically. Ultimately, the new regulations may prevent British online casinos from providing generous bonus offers, and also put an upper limit on deposits and increase affordability checks.
The new policy would add to the UK’s status as holding one of the strictest regulated gambling markets in the world. The policy would not, however, prevent websites such as https://www.spinsify.com/uk/new-casinos/ from continuing to list all the newest UK online casinos and compare different casino deals to customers, according to whichever regulations were in place at the time.
Alleged discord between market and policy data
The market is torn in their responses to whether the new policy would be effective or not. Following the implementation of the limitations on brick-and-mortar casinos, many business owners argued that the limited gambling simply forced their customers to seek other alternatives, such as online casinos, while many of the shop workers were forced to lose their jobs as the demand decreased.
For online casinos, this might translate to customers seeking potentially less safe online casinos abroad, in order to avoid new regulations. Some British gambling workers therefore argue that the “outcomes will be disproportionate to the harm that has been avoided”. This discord is also shown in the disagreements between market employed and policy makers around the market data.
The academic and policy driven data tend to present data showing that the majority of gambling revenue profits stem from VIP gamblers, those who spend the most money, including those with the largest losses. The business owners, however, claim that the share of revenue stemming from problem gamblers is but a few percent of the total income.
Other national strategies to battle harmful gambling
The UK Gambling Commission has long been committed to and produced various strategies to battle harmful gambling in the country. One of them has included the policy limiting deposits to physical electronic slot machines mentioned above.
Another has been the introduction of multi-operator self-exclusion with GAMSTOP. This is a service wherein gamblers themselves can choose to exclude themselves manually from gambling platforms. All licensed gambling operators are obligated to honor the self-exclusion scheme.
A third way that the Gambling Commission has worked to actively combat harmful gambling is through their Local Authority (LA) program. By regulating and analyzing gambling habits and risks on more local bases, the Commission aims to approach harmful gambling as a public health issue.
