Monthly Archives: June 2020

UK ‘experts’ want ads to be “the gambling equivalent of ‘smoking kills’”

The UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) is seeking input on how to minimize the excesses of VIP gambling programs as it gets some tough input on gambling advertising from its critics. 

On Friday, the UKGC issued an update on the challenges it issued to the gaming industry last October to make gambling a safer product for consumers. That challenge included tasking a number of UK operators with heading up ‘working groups’ on certain areas of concern.

Gambling critics likened this to putting foxes in henhouses, so the UKGC also sought input from ‘Experts by Experience,’ a self-described group of individuals “who have suffered a wide range of gambling harms, including recovering gambling addicts, family and partners of addicts, and those who have lost children to gambling suicides.”

The three areas of focus in the UKGC’s update are VIP incentive programs, game & product design, and the use of Ad-Tech to ensure youths and vulnerable individuals weren’t exposed to online gambling promos. Much of the info below was previewed in April, but here goes nothing.