Over the last few years, retail and especially online gambling has become favourite pastime for a great number of people in the UK. There are many people who place bets in a safe and responsible manner, but unfortunately, gambling has negative effects, too.
According to experts and user protection organisations, the increasing popularity of online gambling has been one of main reasons for problem gambling behaviour affecting more and more people in the country. This trend has provoked not only the competent authorities, but also a number of problem gambling-oriented organisations raise the red flag and share their concerns about the possible negative effects of compulsive gambling on players’ lives.
All this resulted in the idea of self-exclusion option for players who suffer from problem gambling behaviour in order for them to be given the chance to take control of their lives and become more responsible towards gambling. As revealed by the UK Gambling Commission (UKGC), self-exclusion scheme has been especially developed for the ones who have made the decision to stop gambling for a period of at least six months in order to deal with problem gambling behaviour.
So, all players in the UK who think they spend too much time and money gambling are given the opportunity to take advantage of the so-called self-exclusion scheme and stay away from gambling for a certain period of time. As part of this programme, all licensed gambling business on the territory of the country are required to create their own self-exclusion arrangements and also become part of the multi-operator schemes that allow players to exclude themselves generally from gambling activities with more than one operator.
As mentioned above, several organisations such as GambleAware and GamCare have been focused on helping compulsive gamblers deal with their problem. At the beginning of March 2016, GamCare revealed that new multi-operator self-excluding schemes had been officially launched for the retail sports betting and bingo sectors in order to make people suffering from gambling addictions exclude themselves from more than one gaming venue at the same time.
At the time, both the Association of British Bookmakers and The Bingo Association in the UK launched such self-exclusion schemes for everyone who needed to take control of their problem gambling.
A year later, in March 2017, GambleAware announced that this strategy turned out as effective in terms of betting shops self-exclusion scheme. According to data, released by the leading UK charity organisation, the Multi-Operator Self-Exclusion Scheme (MOSES) was very efficient for about 83% of the users who have been dealing with gambling addictions.
GambleAware also revealed that the scheme helped these users actually reduce or stop their problem gambling, with 71% of a research participants saying they had not made any more attempts to use betting facilities available in their region. According to the data released by the organisation, a total of 54% of the research respondents who used MOSES to exclude themselves from licensed retail betting offices, had also excluded themselves from online betting operations.
Despite the fact that such results could undoubtedly be described as great news for problem gamblers, Casino Guardian has found out that some players find it hard to exclude themselves from online gambling websites. The problem is not only users’ struggle to do so. Some of them find it hard to deal with the self-exclusion procedures and the fact that there is still no way for them to exclude themselves from every online gambling website with filling in one form only.
Some compulsive gamblers who have found it tough to follow the procedures and exclude themselves from the websites one by one have shared that they had tried blocking software to find a solution to this problem. This has been one of the main reasons why some users shared their concerns with the situation, calling the entire self-exclusion system ineffective and demanded more serious measures to be forced upon the industry by the competent authorities.
Apart from that, some players reported of cases when problem gamblers have used the self-exclusion option at a certain casino that is part of a group. According to GamCare Forum users, sometimes such players have a relapse and come back to their gambling habits, and they could place abet in a casino from the same online gambling operator’s group without even knowing it. According to users, such websites need to warn such players if something like this happens and make them aware of the fact that they have previously excluded themselves from the website.
Some of them have made a proposal for the implementation of a stricter regime from the UK Gambling Commission. According to them, the UK regulatory watchdog could make it obligatory for all local players to have an ID number and password linked to their personal details in order for this information to be used whenever they register at a casino website. In their opinion, such a measure would turn out to be more efficient when it comes to prevention of signing up in other gambling websites after once taken advantage of the self-exclusion scheme.
Measures have already been taken in that direction. As previously reported by Casino Guardian, at the beginning of June, the Remote Gambling Association (RGA) revealed a new brand aimed at the nationwide online self-exclusion scheme. The GAMSTOP brand has been designed in order to meet the UK Gambling Commission’s License Conditions and Codes of Practice requirements.
The new GAMSTOP brand is focused on providing UK problem gamblers with a chance to exclude themselves voluntarily from gambling activities currently provided by all gambling companies which operate in the UK by using a single website process. In other words, the brand is especially aimed at making a multi-operator exclusion, so that local players would be able to see more efficient self-exclusion scheme for themselves.
- Author
Daniel Williams
