Hit the bar: assessing the effectiveness of online self-exclusion tools

In September 2024, GAMSTOP announced that more than 500,000 people had used the service since its inception in 2018 to voluntarily self-exclude themselves from gambling sites and apps. Less than a month later, Australian counterpart BetStop declared it had hit 30,000 sign-ups in just over a year since its formation by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA).

Both numbers underline just how important self-exclusion schemes have become as part of the wider safer gambling discourse. Yet the journey to those milestones has not been without controversy, as both have seen vulnerable users slip through the cracks, proving self-exclusion tools, while useful, are not infallible.   

For example, GAMSTOP was the subject of a 2019 BBC investigation that uncovered consumers who had self-excluded could still place bets by simply signing up for an online bookmaker using different details to evade detection. Last year, the spotlight fell on BetStop, after one user discovered an identical hole in the system that allowed him to make accounts with eight different operators, eventually leading him to incur losses of nearly A$70,000, despite the fact he had requested a lifetime exclusion.

Both disputes highlight the potential fragilities of relying on players to self-exclude and raises questions over whether any nation possesses a scheme robust enough to avoid such issues. The slip-ups in the UK and Australia allowed users to side-step the scheme entirely and place bets online, the very thing these tools should prevent.

Other countries have also seen their respective schemes make unwanted headlines. For example, in summer 2022 the Danish Gambling Authority (DGA) identified a bug in its Register of Self Excluded Players (ROFUS) where around 1,300 users who had blocked themselves from gambling either did not show up in the system or appeared with an incorrect date.

In a separate incident, in February 2024, around 1,200 users were impacted by an error surrounding the renewal of existing registrations in ROFUS. It meant long-term registrants were not excluded from new games that had been covered by the system since the original registration. Therefore, some players were mistakenly able to gamble at physical casinos or place bets via betting machines.

The saga highlighted how these types of errors can impact established self-exclusion schemes. ROFUS launched in 2012 when Denmark regulated online gambling. In the 13 years that followed, ROFUS has undergone several changes, including a mandate for all operators to refer to the scheme in marketing materials from 1 January 2020, with the DGA’s focus on improving awareness of the scheme contributing to ROFUS surpassing 50,000 registrants, as of April 2024.

In contrast, Australia’s BetStop has been available to users for just shy of 18 months. Much like ROFUS in Denmark, Australian operators are required to signpost BetStop on all relevant websites, apps and in marketing materials.

Marketing to self-excluded players has also previously cost operators. For instance, an incident involving Paddy Power resulted in a £490,000 fine from the Gambling Commission (GC) in May 2023. After an investigation found the bookmaker had sent promotional materials to GAMSTOP users in November 2021.

It was soon confirmed the email was only sent to Paddy Power customers, with the Flutter-owned outfit attributing the mistake to human error, before noting none of the self-excluded players who received the email would have been able to place a bet.      

A targeted approach        

Technical glitches aside, one of the main challenges faced by any self-exclusion scheme is the fact it relies on gamblers to make an objective assessment of their own activity.

Kirsty Caldwell, founder and CEO of Betsmart Consulting, says the system can raise more issues further down the line. “You will often get customers who make the decision to exclude, and they’ll just send a very quick message saying, ‘Exclude my account’, but there are certain stages you must go through to be able to make sure the exclusion is fully processed,” she explains.

“Sometimes, you have an issue whereby a customer thinks they’ve fully excluded, and they haven’t, then they will come back and reactivate the account, which they can do because they’ve not gone through the process.”

In the UK, users can self-exclude from individual operators. Caldwell concedes it is often not the most effective measure as players can simply start gambling with another firm. If they wish to opt out, a service like GAMSTOP is available to allow a blanket ban from every licensed operator, though that wasn’t always the case.

Launched in April 2018, the Gambling Commission did not issue a mandate for all operators to participate until 31 March 2020, the kind of backing the scheme’s CEO insists was of vital importance. “Without all operators actively participating in the service, it meant consumers weren’t afforded the greatest protection that was needed,” says Fiona Palmer, CEO of GAMSTOP.

GAMSTOP now faces a new threat: unlicensed online bookmakers specifically targeting those on its register. A recent report from the Betting and Gaming Council, the industry’s trade body, suggested as much as £4.3bn is now staked on the black market each year by Brits, £2.7bn of which is estimated to be bet through illegal channels online.

The allure of unlicensed operators is evident for those who relish the prospect of playing within a system free from mandatory cool-off periods, boasting unrestricted gameplay and slots stakes, as well as attractive sign-up bonuses. 

There is an undeniable appetite for such activity, with a notable rise in the number of searches for ‘casinos not on GAMSTOP’. According to Yahoo Finance, market analysts estimate the non-GAMSTOP casino market was worth £1.5bn in 2023, and it could have risen to as much as £2.3bn by 2025. That would outpace the regulated sector in the UK.

Addressing the surge in search activity for sites not using GAMSTOP, Palmer describes the unlicensed operators targeting customers from the self-exclusion scheme’s register as “abhorrent”. The CEO is working closely with both the GC and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to try to clamp down on unscrupulous sites and affiliates targeting UK players in this way.    

Silver-bullet speculation      

Self-exclusion relies on the players themselves to opt out but, in the UK, it could soon become commonplace for operators to intervene, taking the decision out of customers’ hands. September 2024 marked the launch of GamProtect, a system that lets operators identify markers of harm and take action by blocking the user if the activity displayed hits certain criteria. While the scheme is still in its infancy, with just six operators signed up so far, the ‘single customer view’ approach presents the question of whether self-exclusion schemes can co-exist with such a system.

The idea of operators collaborating to share data on customers who have displayed markers of harm, could be viewed as the silver bullet needed to drastically reduce gambling-related harm, rather than relying on players to take the decision to exclude themselves.

Caldwell is hopeful, but admits lots of work needs to be done first. “Definitely [it will be more effective] but it’s very much in its infancy. We’ve been trying to do this for years,” she explains. “The majority of operators have their markers of harm algorithms set up differently because it’s quite nuanced. That’s going to be really challenging once we get further down the line because different operators are going to have different ideas on what they think is a marker of harm.”

As Caldwell points out, what is recognised as a marker of harm can differ between bookmakers, but some of the most common behavioural traits to fall under that remit, as per the GC’s website, include chasing losses, failed deposits, playing longer sessions, erratic betting patterns and gambling on higher risk products or unusual markets.

Others have speculated whether ‘layering’ safer gambling tools is a more productive approach, with blocking software also a common tactic deployed for users looking to remove every possible avenue that could lead to gambling. It is an approach encouraged by GAMSTOP’s Palmer, who likens the situation to a sieve: with each tool used, another potentially harmful gap is blocked.

An obvious example of layering is the creation of TalkStopBan, a partnership that combines the services of charity GamCare’s trained advisers, self-exclusion service Gamban’s blocking software and signposts to GAMSTOP’s self-exclusion register. December marked four years since its launch, while in May 2023, GambleAware – a leading charity and strategic commission of gambling research, education and treatment (RET) – announced it would extend the programme’s funding until 2026.

Evaluating efficacy

With technology constantly evolving and unlicensed operators targeting vulnerable players, it is vital that those overseeing the schemes do all they can to ensure they have the tools to combat any unforeseeable issues that might arise. In turn, regular evaluation to determine efficacy is paramount for the likes of GAMSTOP and ROFUS, with the former revealing it relies on third-party research as part of its maintenance and removes itself from the process entirely.

“We also work with the regulator, so with the Gambling Commission, and we have formed a working group that is a self-exclusion scheme owners’ group,” Palmer adds. “We work together to look at tackling the topic of putting the consumer at the heart of this. If consumers want to self-exclude, we should make it easy for them to do so. We shouldn’t be sending them around the houses. That’s what we should be striving towards, a consumer-first approach.”

A September 2024 independent review of GAMSTOP suggested its work is having the desired effect. Seventy-eight percent of users felt it had delivered the results they were hoping for, while 80% declared they would recommend the self-exclusion scheme to others. Of the 4,650 users surveyed, 73% said they were satisfied with the service. That figure rose to 85% among those who no longer gamble.

GAMSTOP announced record sign-ups in early 2025, with the first two days of January seeing a combined total of 828 new registrations, alongside a further 396 sign-ups on 6 January. Linda Lomborg, head of division and responsible for ROFUS, details the scheme’s evaluation process, which occurs once a month, noting two areas of potential change: “We are always looking to do better.

“It’s a long process every time we need to change anything, but changing the period of exclusion is something we’ve discussed, and changing the type of games you can exclude from. We are considering letting users exclude from only land-based casinos or only online games if that’s where you have a problem.”

Australia’s BetStop is set to undergo a review of its own, the first since its launch, led by former senior public servant Richard Eccles at the request of the country’s communications minister, Michelle Rowland. The purpose of the review, now open for consultation until 30 April 2025, is to consider how effective the self-exclusion tool has been in supporting the regulatory framework. Eccles is expected to present his findings to Rowland within 18 months, while the report will be tabled in parliament.

On the horizon

The future of each scheme is dependent on the regulators and companies that oversee them, but on UK soil, Palmer says GAMSTOP is aiming to bring online and land-based exclusion systems closer together for a more seamless user sign-up process.

The CEO continues by detailing how plenty of the organisation’s ambitions stem from the consumer’s perspective, with the introduction of a new five-year auto-renewal exclusion option announced in early January.

Lomborg echoes the sentiment as she outlines what she hopes awaits ROFUS users soon. She says: “We want longer exclusion periods. We’ve also been talking about how the players with shorter exclusion periods need to actively do something to get removed from the register, instead of automatic removal. Also, we hear people don’t want to use the register because they enjoy attending land-based casinos, but all online gambling is a problem. We are trying to make a system that reflects what the player wants.”

Denmark’s ROFUS has been in place longer than Italy’s Unique Self Exclusion Registry, created in 2018, Sweden’s Spelpaus.se, which was created in 2019, and Germany’s OASIS tool launched in 2021. Of all the nations mentioned, there is a divide between those that link their programmes to cover land-based locations as well as online operators. Denmark, like Sweden and Germany, has all users excluded from every form of gambling once registered, while in the UK and Italy, land-based schemes are run as separate entities, something GAMSTOP appears keen on changing.

In Spain, the General Register of Gaming Access Bans, much like Germany, Sweden and Denmark, covers both land-based and online bookmakers. To exclude, it asks users to provide passport information and their home address, which is then forwarded to bricks-and-mortar casinos, which require passport identification for entry. Meanwhile the user is blocked from signing up with any online operators, which also ask for the same information during signup.

In the case of Sweden’s Spelpaus.se, which has seen more than 120,000 people self-exclude since the market re-regulated in 2019, the scheme requires participants to submit some form of e-identification (eID), including a BankID or Foreign eID, before blocking the user from all forms of gambling. Palmer notes that GAMSTOP has long been willing to learn from and advise other schemes, as it can’t afford to stand still and expect success. Lomborg reveals those overseeing ROFUS share information with other schemes “all the time”.

Collaboration among nations could prove key in shaping self-exclusion systems, while aspects such as layering different tools and installing blocking software remain sound advice. For the foreseeable future, self-exclusion schemes are more than a worthy part of a safer gambling armoury, but by no means the silver bullet.