Customers hit with affordability checks 'disappear and go elsewhere', MPs warned

There were calls for the views of customers to be heard when it comes to the controversial subject of affordability checks at a meeting of the Parliamentary All Party Betting and Gaming Group last week.

With the issue sure to feature when the government's gambling review white paper is finally published, the meeting raised the question of whether there was a solution that does not "push punters to the black market".

David Williams, director of public affairs at Rank Group, a gambling company whose brands include Mecca Bingo and Grosvenor Casinos, said: "Throughout all of this we rarely ask or hear what is it that the customer wants.

"Do they want these checks, do they want interventions? When do they want them and how do they want them?"

Williams told the meeting that Rank's experience of customer reaction to being asked for personal financial information was evidence that such requests were deeply unpopular, something it told the Gambling Commission when the regulator consulted on the subject last year.

He said: "If affordability checks are mandated at monthly deposit limits of £125 as was being widely discussed at the time, this would capture customers accounting for 88 per cent of our digital revenues.

"Our experience in the 12 months prior to the call for evidence is that fewer than one in ten of our customers were prepared to provide that documentary evidence on request to support their level of expenditure.

"The remaining customers, over 90 per cent, failed to provide the documents and that was the end of the business relationship. They disappeared. They went elsewhere. We can speculate as to where they might have gone."

Industry veteran Charles Cohen, founder of DoTrust which has developed an app called BetBudget as a "personal budgeting tool for gamblers", said customers did not trust gambling operators with their financial information.

He added: "On top of that, the process of giving your bank statements is painful, not only the first time you do it, but the next time you do it and the time after that and the time after that.

"It doesn't at all surprise me that even at a relatively low threshold 80 to 90 per cent of an operator's entire income could be covered by this. You can understand why the operators are terrified at the thought of there being a fixed line in the sand at which they have to ask everybody for documents above a relatively low level."

Philip Davies: MP described some afffordability plans as 'ridiculous'Credit: Edward Whitaker

Williams' view was echoed by Philip Davies MP. He said: "The people whose voice often gets lost in this whole debate is the customer. Nobody who is making these decisions, and this includes parliamentarians, asks them what is important to them.

"Everything is being decided for them all the time and they've just got to like it or lump it. The voice of the customer needs to be heard a lot more in this debate."

Davies said he thought it was "ridiculous" to ask operators to be the arbiter about how much an individual could afford to lose gambling.

"We certainly don't ask any other industry to decide how much their customers can afford to spend on anything," Davies added, "so why on earth should we do that with gambling?"

Davies said he believed customers should be made to set their own limits.

He added: "That should be for them to decide and then the industry should be hanged, so to speak, if they allow anybody to bet beyond what they've said they can afford to lose.

"That is where the responsibility for the industry should be, we can't have a situation where the industry determines how much each individual person can lose, it's a ludicrous suggestion."

Warren Russell, the founder of W2 – which provides regulatory compliance services to the gambling industry – said there needed to be a "nuanced solution".

He added: "To bring it back round to how do we stop people going to unlicensed operators, I think the key thing is that the consumer has a choice.

"What does the customer want? When does the customer want the checks done? All we see at the moment is they want the checks to have been done when they've got into trouble. They don't want the checks to be done if they are not in trouble as it stands at the moment."

Williams said that affordability would feature in the white paper and that "we just have to make sure it is sensible".

He added: "We should not be looking at this through the lens of what is right for operators, or the regulator, or the state. All three of those are wrong. It is only the customer that matters."

Betfred expand in South Africa through LottoStar deal

Betfred have further expanded their footprint in South Africa with the launch of a major partnership with the country's largest online betting company LottoStar.

They have taken a majority shareholding in LottoStar, which offers fixed-odds numbers betting and live games on its online platform.

Betfred currently operate 53 shops and an online business in South Africa following the acquisition of Betting World and Sepels Sportsbet.

Chief executive Joanne Whittaker said: "We are delighted to partner with such a fast-growing company in South Africa, the business will not only complement our activity in South Africa but our international businesses in the United States and Europe.

"We look forward to working closely with the LottoStar team to support the continued growth of the business providing world-class games and services to the online betting market in South Africa."

Spotlight Sports Group partners with Catena Media

The Racing Post's parent company Spotlight Sports Group (SSG) has agreed a partnership with Catena Media to integrate SSG's Superfeed content engine into its horseracing-focused sites, GG.co.uk and racingtips.com.

Catena Media’s head of north division international Isabel Hale said: “We chose Spotlight Sports Group as we know the quality, depth and breadth of their content and data is the best around and will benefit our brands with their insightful betting analysis.

"We believe that the innovative Superfeed content engine will allow us to best serve our consumers with the information they need to make betting decisions."

Safer Gambling Week website launched

Safer Gambling Week has launched a brand-new website ahead of this year's event which will run from October 17-23. The website at www.safergamblinguk.org will be a hub for information and tools on safer gambling.

The Safer Gambling Week campaign, organised by the Betting and Gaming Council, Bacta and the Bingo Association, is now in its sixth year. Last year the promotion and awareness of safer gambling tools such as deposit limits led to an increase by 17 per cent in their use against the previous four-week average.

For industry news, expert opinion and all the latest business to business racing and sports products visit Racing Post B2B

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The Front Runner is our latest email newsletter available exclusively to Members' Club Ultimate subscribers. Chris Cook, a four-time Racing Reporter of the Year award winner, provides his take on the day's biggest stories and tips for the upcoming racing every morning from Monday to Friday