The spring-summer lockdown in 2020 has forced people switching online – for both working and entertaining. In the gambling industry, more and more casino players have started visiting online playing rooms, which has turned into the increase in profits of leading providers, such as GVC Holdings and William Hill. The other side of the situation is the risk of an increase in gambling problems, such as an uncontrolled addiction. In these circumstances, the responsibility to prevent growth the number of gambling-addicted people rests within casino operators even more.
During the past few years, there was an overall industry-wide effort to increase players’ protection. Several actual steps were taken in many countries, for example, in the UK credit cards were banned from gambling, starting from April. Other significant steps include session timers, markers of harms and other limitations for players. All these were managed for people to enjoy gambling and betting in a responsible way.
However, these positive incentives have had a negative effect, as well. Some players turned towards the so-called “black market” operators, as the last usually have fewer restrictions. In fact, white label operators are highly interested to counter this situation, because of the loss of potential websites’ visitors. One of the effective ways to fix it is by educating players, although this requires investing extra resources in the promotion.
While education and promotion of responsible gambling are key, making regulations even more strict can be counterproductive. Some white-label operators in the UK have set a daily gambling limit of £50 during the self-isolation period. This has created a situation of unmet demand, and many players have switched towards illegal establishments.
Different people can have different relationships with gambling, and restricting these two, in the same way, is a wrong strategy for gambling operators. To deal with the clients’ differentiation problem, organisations have to come together and share best practices of helping players.
The situation with regulating addiction is controversial and any practical steps should be managed with extra care. On one hand, the right messages are all saying all the right things. But this causes the risk of black-hat practices for customers’ acquisition.
The article was prepared by the Denmark-Bonusesfinder.com team.
