The UK Gambling Commission has published a series of updates of its License Conditions and Codes of Practice (LCCP) for licensed operators, which will take effect May 8.
The changes to the LCCP are a response to the LCCP social responsibility review that took place last year, increasing the number of measures with which companies must comply under the terms of their license agreement.
Here are the main points of the new regulatory enhancements, much of which will go into effect in May:
Operators’ employees must be able to supervise customers effectively on gambling premises. And they must have arrangements for identifying customers who are at risk of gambling-related harm, if they are not displaying obvious signs.
Larger operators must conduct test purchasing to make sure that their systems for preventing underage gambling are working.
By April 2016, land-based operators must have in place schemes that allow a customer to make a single request to self-exclude from all operators of a similar type within their area – typically where they live and work. The Commission is also working with industry representatives to develop a national online self-exclusion scheme, which should be in place in 2017.
A range of measures to ensure that marketing and advertising is socially responsible, including a requirement that the marketing of ‘free bet’ offers is open, transparent and not misleading.
Online operators must provide “time-out” facilities so that players can take a break from their gambling, and offer players the ability to set a timed on-screen check to help them review their spend and possibly stop playing.
“The work we have done through the review represents a significant strengthening of the social responsibility measures in the LCCP. But we have reached the point at which it is clear that much more could be achieved if anonymous gambling in cash was not such a prominent feature of land-based gambling. Removing anonymity of course raises its own challenges and it is time for a proper public debate on the costs and benefits of doing so,” said UK Gambling Commission chair Philip Graf.
Should casino-style social gaming be regulated in UK?
Various studies were commissioned, including those published by the Gambling Commission itself and the International Social Gaming Association (ISGA) on whether “casino-style social gaming” should be regulated.
The British Gambling Commission concluded that “there is no compelling reason at the moment to impose additional regulation on the social gaming sector but will continue to monitor the issue of social gaming and emerging evidence from a variety of sources, working in partnership with the industry and other regulators.”
“Based on the data we have seen, and subject to its limitations, we do not consider there is a persuasive case to move from the ‘watching brief’ stance we have adopted to date. While the data suggests that, in general, the vast majority of people who play social games spend very modest amounts of time and money, there is clearly a very small cohort who spend significant amounts. However, it is likely that this group is insufficiently large to justify any form of additional regulatory intervention,” added the commission.
