The Sunday Times - UK (2022-05-22)

6 The Sunday Times May 22, 2022

BUSINESS

badly over the years,” he said, pointing to

the lavish gifts offered to VIPs. “They’ve

made a huge proportion of profits from

people who should not have been gam-

bling and are now addicted. It’s immoral.

“This representation of gambling as a

harmless sport is not true at all.”

The ground was set for an explosion in

Britain’s betting industry in 2005, when

the Gambling Act made the UK one of the

world’s most deregulated markets. Oper-

ators rolled out powerful new machines,

the fixed-odds betting terminals, which

allowed punters to stake up to £100 on a

single spin. The machines were fast and

enticed customers to chase their losses —

placing bet after bet within seconds.

FOBTs generated hundreds of millions

in profits but became known as the

“crack cocaine of gambling”, with stories

of punters losing thousands of pounds in

one sitting. That provoked a reaction: in

2019, they were neutered through the

introduction of the £2 maximum spin.

Overnight, bookies’ profits were wiped

out. William Hill plunged to a £720 mil-

lion loss following the new legislation.

However, the fast-paced nature of

FOBTs had already been replicated

online, in the form of whizzy casino

games and “in play” betting on live sports

events with no maximum wager. Betting

was no longer consigned to horseracing

or the National Lottery; the next win

could be mere seconds away.

Celebrities from Jose Mourinho to Ray

Winstone and Roy Keane lined up to

appear in adverts and the money rolled

in. In the year to March 2021, almost

Will Prochaska, a director at Gambling

With Lives, said industry claims of sup-

porting safer gambling were a “smoke-

screen to try and resist regulation”.

“The gambling industry tries to tell us

that the harm is caused by a small group

of vulnerable people who’ve got things

like an addictive personality, and we have

to simply help that small group,” he said.

Instead, Prochaska argued that it was the

products that were to blame — with

instant-win casino games a key culprit.

“We’re supporting a growing number of

inquests right now where gambling is

going to be a central feature,” he added.

I

n March this year, the Gambling Com-

mission fined Sky Betting and Gaming,

owned by Flutter, £1.2 million after it

mistakenly sent promotional emails to

customers who had asked to be

excluded or had opted out of receiving

marketing. Last November, the operator

had distributed a Sky Vegas promotional

offer of “Bet £5 to get 100 free spins” to

41,395 customers who had asked to be

locked out of their accounts.

In the same month, 888 was fined

£9.4 million for a list of failings. These

included not interacting with a customer

who lost £37,000 in a six-week period

during the pandemic. Another customer,

who the company knew was an NHS

worker earning £1,400 a month, was

given a monthly deposit cap of £1,300.

The firm also allowed customers to

deposit £40,000 before carrying out

checks on their source of funds — raising

the risk of money laundering.

Entain, previously known as GVC,

agreed to pay £5.9 million in 2019 after

the Gambling Commission found it had

failed to prevent money laundering. The

watchdog said it did not carry out any

interactions with a customer who lost

£98,000 over 2½ years and had 460

attempted deposits into their account

declined. Another spent £1.5 million over

two years and ten months but was not

asked to provide evidence of their source

of funds. They had logged on to their

account an average of ten times a day.

Since then, Entain has launched new

technology to catch customers showing

signs of harmful behaviour, and has

shifted its focus to more recreational

gamblers rather than VIPs.

There are calls now for a “single cus-

tomer view” that would enable tabs to be

kept on vulnerable gamblers no matter

who they choose to bet with. Campaign-

ers also want affordability checks to kick

in once monthly losses hit £100.

“Some of the legacy stories do not

make good reading,” said Rob Hoskin,

chief governance officer at Entain, over a

demonstration of its new program,

Advanced Responsibility and Care (ARC).

The software, which was launched late

last year, encourages customers to set

deposit limits and take time out. If play-

ers refuse to set their own limits, the tech-

nology steps in to enforce them. “We

want customers long-term. If you take

higher-risk players and they burn out, it’s

not a great business model,” Hoskin said.

In Leeds, another customer pops up

on the screen. This time, the red flag was

high-stake bets on horseracing. The gam-

bler had deposited £1,100 in his account

within half an hour and lost it all, the bulk

of the money on a single bet. Again, the

customer did not answer a phone call, so

Marie set a £200 deposit limit on his

account. “With horseracing, I’ll hear

things like: ‘It was a sure bet — all my

friends are putting it on,’ ” she said.

“Sometimes it’s even just a spurt of

what they think is luck. ‘I’ve never done it

before — I’m going to do it now and hope

for the best.’ ”

Monitoring systems at Flutter

and others are designed to

pick up on key signs that a

customer’s betting is out of

control. They include:

6 A punter suddenly begins

to deposit higher amounts

than they have historically.

6 Gamblers start to place

increasingly large sums on a

single event.

6 They spend more time on

the site than they have

previously.

6 Customer losses reach a

threshold within 30 days of

opening an account.

6 A search of customer

details online reveals they

have been in the news for

committing a crime.

6 A customer tries to deposit

money but their debit card is

declined — suggesting they

have insufficient funds.

6 Gamblers spend a lot of

time on the site late at night

and into the early hours,

typically between 12am

and 6am.

£1.2m

A fine for Flutter from the Gambling

Commission in March this year

£9.4m

The penalty for 888 in the same

month over a list of failings

£5.9m

Entain, once GVC, paid this in 2019 for

failing to stop money laundering

At a riverside call centre, staff monitor problem gamblers — the latest

effort by bookies to prove they don’t need tough new regulation

Gambling giants bet

on showing they care

ILLUSTRATION: TONY BELL

THE RED FLAGS

OF PROBLEM

GAMBLING

O

ne morning last month, in a

Leeds office building over-

looking the River Aire, Marie

received an alert. A new cus-

tomer, aged 31, had triggered

an alarm after depositing

£1,700 in his account with

the gambling giant Flutter

Entertainment, and was rap-

idly placing bets of more

than £100 a time. The behaviour was a red

flag. The man had already requested a

24-hour cooling-off period but had

returned to the site as soon as it expired.

When he did not answer a phone call,

Marie blocked the account, removing his

ability to place bets and deposit money

until he rang up to discuss his actions.

“It’s not usual for us to see that,” she said.

Marie is part of a growing team of 88 at

the gambling company behind brands

such as Paddy Power, Sky Bet and Poker-

Stars. They are responsible for spotting

customers showing signs of harmful

behaviour. Marie and her colleagues,

who monitor activity 24 hours a day, have

the power to freeze accounts and enforce

deposit limits on any gamblers they

believe could be in trouble.

Blocking customers from depositing

funds and placing bets may seem coun-

terintuitive for a company that makes its

money from gambling, but player protec-

tion is now a matter of survival. Flutter

and its rivals await a review of gambling

laws that is likely to enforce more strin-

gent checks on affordability and limits on

how much can be bet at one time. It could

be published as soon as next month.

Campaigners say a move to crack

down on the industry is long overdue and

that regulation in the UK is not fit for the

digital age. Britain’s gambling laws were

last overhauled in 2005 during the Blair

administration, when sweeping reforms

paved the way for an explosion in betting

shops and controversial fixed-odds bet-

ting terminals (FOBTs). Since then,

online gambling has overtaken betting in

high street shops, with smartphones

allowing customers access to a casino in

the palm of their hand. Bookmakers have

historically focused on so-called VIP cus-

tomers, treating these high spenders to

tickets to football matches, free bets and

personalised services.

Conor Grant is Flutter’s chief executive

for the UK and Ireland. He has a brief to

ensure that the operator does not repeat

the mistakes of the past, errors that

resulted in multimillion-pound fines for

operators including Flutter, 888 and Will-

iam Hill. Flutter, then Paddy Power Bet-

fair, was ordered to pay £2.2 million in

2018 for failing to protect customers and

stop stolen money from being gambled.

“There has been a seismic change over

the past two to three years,” said Grant at

his company’s Leeds outpost. “Flutter,

and a number of our leading competi-

tors, have been making huge strides in

terms of how we interact with our cus-

tomers.” These changes include scrap-

ping VIP schemes and implementing a

£500 monthly deposit cap on customers

under the age of 25. Its new “safer gam-

bling” tools, which encourage people to

set deposit limits and monitor their play,

are now being used by one in three cus-

tomers. There has also been a ban on

credit card deposits, and the industry has

increased payments to a charity set up to

treat gambling addiction.

If Grant and his competitors are eager

to show they can be trusted to protect

customers, that may be because there is a

strong chance the review of Britain’s

gambling laws will have the power to take

big chunks out of their profits. There are

likely to be stricter checks on what gam-

blers can afford to pay, including require-

ments to view payslips, and new stake

limits on online games that could be as

low as £2 a spin, should it echo the crack-

down on FOBTs in 2019. There is also

expected to be a new, independent

industry ombudsman to settle disputes,

and campaigners want a statutory levy

on the industry to fund research and

addiction treatment for gamblers.

Iain Duncan Smith, the former Con-

servative Party leader and vice-chair of

the all-party parliamentary group on

gambling harm, has been leading the

push for greater checks on betting firms.

“It’s an industry that has behaved very

SABAH MEDDINGS

£7 billion was made in gross yield — the

amount retained by bookies after win-

nings have been paid to customers.

The effect of gambling addiction on

victims and their families has come to

light in a string of high-profile cases. Jack

Ritchie killed himself at the age of 24 in

2017 after a seven-year addiction. Despite

having mostly stopped betting in the 18

months before his death, Jack relapsed

and took his own life in Vietnam within

an hour of crashing out of an online ses-

sion. His last note said he decided on sui-

cide because he felt controlled by gam-

bling and would never be free.

His parents, Charles and Liz Ritchie,

founded Gambling With Lives, a charity

that campaigns to reform the UK’s gam-

bling laws. Its list of demands includes

stringent affordability checks, stake lim-

its and a blanket ban on advertising.

Along with other campaign groups, Gam-

bling With Lives says the industry cannot

be trusted to protect customers without

government intervention.

The concerns are shown in the figures.

A study by City University and Glasgow

University, published in the Lancet last

year, found that 37 per cent of men

who had attempted suicide in the

previous 12 months had links with

problem gambling. Of the

women who had attempted

suicide in the previous

year, 14.5 per cent had

results that sug-

gested gambling

addictions.

Gambling companies have

been promoted by Jose

Mourinho, above, and

Cristiano Ronaldo