Safer gambling – a year-round commitment

Safer Gambling Week may only happen once a year, but promoting safer gambling is a year-round commitment to ensure the best outcomes for our customers. 

This is something that resonates with me more than ever since I began working in bingo. Coming from a background of licensed betting offices and fintechs, I quickly learnt that bingo is a whole different ball game. It is a community built on fun and friendship, and a pastime that has been a UK mainstay since the Gaming Act 1968, helping people form important social connections within their communities.

Bingo is fundamentally a low stake game seen as a leisure activity by millions of people who come together to play online and in clubs. However, operating at this scale comes with a huge responsibility to keep our customers safe, which requires not only financial investment but also a fundamental safety commitment integrated at every level of our business.

That’s why, at Buzz, our risk and compliance team works in collaboration with all departments and colleagues on the ground in our clubs to train, help and advise them on how to keep our customers safe. 

Our colleagues interact directly with players in club and online, making a real difference by building trust and forming relationships which allow us to truly live up to the safer gambling ethos. They educate our customers on tools that help players enjoy their games to the fullest while knowing they are protected from spending more than they would like or putting themselves at risk. 

We also have some incredible tools at our disposal. Recently, we invested nearly £2m into a compliance regime that includes third-party software for assessing the vulnerability and affordability of our players and monitoring their behaviours for patterns and signs of potential gambling-related harm as fast as possible. 

We have externally trained and internally mentored player protection officers who dedicate their time to guiding our customers through the outcomes of these safeguards day in and day out – outcomes that, where necessary, can include self-exclusion.

Safer Gambling Week is pivotal to our industry, reinforcing the importance of safer gambling as a core component of our operations. As outlined, this incorporates two key initiatives: one is the investment in tools and software to enhance player protections; the second is the environment we create in our clubs and online products. 

Our colleagues not only receive frequent training to promote safer gambling, but they also have the trust of our customers, and this comes from bingo being at the centre of towns and cities across the UK for decades. 

In bingo, safer gambling is not just a campaign. It is at the heart of our offer.

Jacqueline Dunkley has been the director of compliance and deputy money laundering reporting officer at Buzz Group since June 2024, where she leads the regulatory framework across both the company’s retail clubs and digital platforms.

Dunkley joined Buzz Bingo in 2020, bringing with her more than 15 years’ experience in regulatory compliance from her previous roles at insurance company Zego and industry giant Ladbrokes.

With Buzz Bingo’s recent growth, including acquisitions and the relocation of its digital operations to Gibraltar, her role has become increasingly important in ensuring regulatory compliance and customer safety. Dunkley is passionate about advancing women in leadership, and DEI as a whole.

At Buzz Bingo, she leads the working group for accessibility, as part of her commitment to promoting mental and physical health diversity within the gambling industry.