Reshaping an Industry

Reshaping an Entire Industry

Reshape of the Gambling industry. Prevent Harm. Technology driven.

We envision a world where players are actively protected from harm by promoting safe & healthy habits, and by preventing addiction.

Purpose

Contribute to bring ethics to the gambling industry, and help tackle the financial, personal and social harms caused by gambling addiction.

Context

Although online gambling is increasing in popularity, social attitudes are changing throughout the world, especially in the UK and in many EU countries. New upcoming regulations shift more responsibility on operators to protect users, prevent harm, identify signs of risk earlier and act in a timely and effective manner to limit the social harm of addiction.

Online gambling in the EU →

UK regulation introduced to promote safer gambling

Gambling Commission announces package of changes which make online games safer by design

UK Gambling commision some highlight related to safer gambling & interactions:

Gambling Commission – For gambling businesses – Social responsibility Gambling Commission – For gambling businesses – The importance of interacting with customers Gambling Commission – Customer-Interaction-Formal-Guidance-Remote-July-2019.pdf

UK Gambling industry statistics:

Gambling Commission – Industry Statistics November 2020 Gambling Commision – Gambling Industry Statistics

10% - 0 %

Substantial difficulties

0 %

Huge addiction & relapses

up to 0 %

Moderate problems

Challenges

In a survey commissioned by the GambleAware charity, YouGov estimated that up to 2.7% of adults in Great Britain, or nearly 1.4 million people, were problem gamblers.

Operators typically focus on 0.7% of pathological gamblers – those with most severe addiction.

This however doesn’t account form the range of harm caused by gambling:
As many as 7% of adults, or 3.6 million people, report having been negatively affected by someone else’s gambling problem.
Overall, research suggests that nearly 5 million British people have experienced harm linked to gambling, even accounting for the overlap between problem gamblers and those they affect.

Previous research estimated that 6.6% of gamblers in England are at low or moderate risk of developing problems with their gambling plus 1.2% of gamblers in England identified as problem gamblers.

YouGov research for GambleAware:

Gambling Commission – New report takes significant step forward in measuring the impact of gambling related harms

The Guardian – UK gambling addiction YouGov research

Gambling Commission – Gambling-behaviour-in-Great-Britain-2016.pdf

Mechanics of the industry

The entire gambling industry is facing a real sustainability crisis. On one hand, social attitudes and regulatory pressure increasing the liability risk of operators, who must start actively protecting users or face huge fines, financial penalties and reputation damage.

On the other hand, growth is also stalling in well regulated countries: competition for customers is very high and very costly. Operators use large signup bonuses to lure new players and rely on network affiliates to acquire new customers. Churn rates have never been higher, as most users simply go with the best bonus offers, leading to high churn rates and low brand loyalty.

Many operators are now looking at expanding to new emergent markets to sustain growth, but essentially this ignores the actual problem.

Online Gambling Laws →

Technology can make a big difference in identifying early signs of problematic gambling. Current solutions unfortunately place responsibility on the player – presume all users make rational decisions that are in their best interest – and therefore only interventin the most serious cases of pathological gambling. It is estimated that about 2% of players fall in this category.

European Gambling Laws →

Now is the time to build solutions that identify early signs of unhealty behaviors to intervene early on, long before players become addicted. This can use a variety of behavioural indicators related to patterns of time and money, but also use Natural Language Processing to pick up signs of risk in user messages.

Proposed Technological Solutions

Automation is needed:
1. to detect early signs and identify players at risk,
2. to intervene in a way that promotes positive actions & heatlhy habits and
3. to monitor and improve effectiveness.

This puts customer protection and wellbeeing ahead of short term profits, turning an exploitative industry into a sustainable form of entertainment.

The analysis capabilities of the online chats will help people with difficulties in the context of the new reglementations - automation and monitoring bodies will make the manipulation less likely.

When done in a considerate and mindful way, customers appreciate the interventions and adopt healthier decisions, and by feeling valued and protected, feel more loyal to the operators who care than the ones who only want their money.

We can grow loyalty and the green side of the disk. No escalation. Negative signals trigger delicate intervention - to eliminate misconception and cognitive bias.

AI and NLP models can analyse user actions and the way they communicate in order to pick-up indicators linked not only with severe, pathological gambling, but with each stage of the addiction lifecycle, to monitor which users are keeping their havits in check, and which show signs of concern.

An operator must taylor all interventions to each user in order to educate them, provide positive decision choices and empower users to recognise warning signs.

Instead of throwing money at the acquisition problem, a socially responsible operator will invest in customer well-being and loyalty.

Gamified interactions which reward healty behaviours will lead to higher lifetime user value, engaged and loyal customers, reduced harm and sustainable business who focus on positive human experience, not on vanishing profits.

Encouraging planning ahead and setting limits helps prevent sessions where users lose control, make impulsive deposits and chase losses.

Disable accelerated gameplay by adding friction: reduce frequency or disable multi-line slots.

Educate the player about misconceptions they might have: can they accurately guess how much time they spent in the last 2 weeks? How much money they spent a week ago? That is the ratio between withdrown winning and total deposits?

By encouraging self-reflection and rewarding good awareness and positive decisions, users can keep enjoying their gaming experience without becoming gambling addicts.