Stepping up: How the Betting and Gaming Council is stepping in to the UK’s debate into online gambling

The newly formed Betting and Gaming Council (BGC) represents 90% of the UK gambling industry and has taken up the mantle of industry defender from the Remote Gambling Association, the Association of British Bookmakers and the National Casino Forum. Launching with a wide-ranging portfolio of safer gambling commitments in November 2019, the BGC bills itself as an organisation dedicated to generating a safe and fair environment for UK punters while also raising standards within the industry.

The BGC’s first chairman, Brigid Simmonds, is a woman who successfully turned around the fortunes of the brewing industry at a time when it enjoyed the worst reputation in UK life. Simmonds chats to EGR Compliance about how knowledge gained in this process can aid the gambling industry and her objectives for the BGC going forward.

EGR Compliance: What is the biggest transferable lesson you’ve taken from your time at the Beer & Pub Association that you’ve applied to the gambling industry?

Brigid Simmonds (BS):  When I first joined the BPPA 10 years ago, they were in not a dissimilar position to where the gambling industry finds itself now, in that they had slightly lost their way in their relationship with government and they’d seen a 42% increase in beer taxation over four years. In addition, government has not understood that beer is a British manufacturing industry, and 82% of what we drink here is brewed here and is mainly served in something which is important to local people, i.e. pubs. Improving the relationships with government also centred around social responsibility. You will not get anywhere working with government in an industry such as this (and the brewing industry) if you can’t demonstrate social responsibility. For brewing, this included a one billion-unit reduction in alcohol, a unit awareness campaign and working with DrinkAware, which is not too dissimilar to GambleAware.  There is also a need to work with a range of external organisations such as local authorities.

EGR Compliance: Do you believe the online gambling industry would benefit or lose out if the same kind of restrictions currently being imposed on the alcohol industry were applied to gambling?

BS:  I’m not quite sure what we mean by restrictions here because the advertising codes in both fields are really the same. The rules around availability are not too dissimilar because you can’t either bet with our members or buy alcohol until the age of 18. Obviously, the alcohol industry does not have a regulator, although there is a pub company adjudicator, which governs the relationship between the industry and its licensees.

EGR Compliance: What for you is the biggest benefit of merging the RGA and ABB to form the BGC?

BS:  It’s quite important to say that this is not actually a merger. This is a new organisation which has bought in membership from the RGA, the ABB and from the casinos. However, we’re open to anyone who has a UK licence and works across the whole of the betting and gaming industry. We hope that as many companies as possible will join us as members of the BGC and already we represent 90% of the sector.

EGR Compliance: Is the UK gambling industry getting a bad press and what are you as its primary spokesperson doing about it?

BS:  As an industry, we need to be on the front foot. From my perspective, I’ve accepted every interview I’ve been offered and some of these have been quite challenging, but it is important that we explain the actions we are taking. It is a challenge but we won’t change our reputation unless we demonstrate in actions, not words, what we’re doing around safer gambling. I have two clear aims.  One is improving our relationship with government and the second is for the consumer to believe and understand that they’re working with an industry that is well regulated, is socially responsible and has high standards of behaviour. We need to work on both.

EGR Compliance: And what percentage of your role revolves around changing the narrative around gambling in the UK?

BS:  I think you could say 100% of my role is committed to safer gambling. Like any trade association, we’ve got a range of activities, everything from responding to consultations to how we build our team. My clear focus is around creating an understanding that it is not necessarily only about what you want to achieve in your own business, it’s about what we want to achieve collectively. All our members and all companies know that we have a reputational challenge, which can only be solved by working together to maintain the highest standards in the industry.

EGR Compliance: How important to the long-term success of the BGC is it that you can deliver realistic, achievable changes to the industry such as the 10 operator safer gambling pledges?

BS:  We are fully embracing of the commitments that were made by those 10 operators. Before our AGM we sent out details of all the commitments to all our members, making it quite clear that we will be signing up to them, looking at how they’ve been implemented, and we will have a clear role in their implementation. So, I think that’s vital. There was nothing in there that any responsible business would regard as an unreasonable commitment. Not everyone is going to be asked to match the increased funding of £10m for YGAM and GamCare to train teachers in areas such as probability, odds and randomness.   Moving these commitments forward is vital and we are working very closely with Sarah Hanratty (CEO of the Senet Group) and her team. It is also important that these commitments are externally evaluated and that as an association we commission more research.

We have shared with our members a CSR publication, which looks at both sustainability and the efforts we are taking to reduce waste and cut carbon.  It also looks at the huge contribution the industry makes to national and local charities outside its commitments to GambleAware. We expect this to be published in the new year.

EGR Compliance: Do you believe there should be a £2 stake limit on online slots games in the UK? If not, what changes would you apply to the online sector to reduce gambling-related harm?

BS:  We need to work with our members on our views. We must listen to the proposals being made by parliamentarians.  For me, the difference between the retail gaming sector and the online sector is that the online world is a global industry. I haven’t met a politician yet who wants to drive people to unregulated markets. I worry that since so much of what we’re doing is about protecting the vulnerable, poorly thought through legislation will drive consumers towards unregulated markets and illegal sites. As an industry, we can’t have a closed minded on anything, but our views are not yet finalised.  We’ve got a strong retail market in the UK, whether it be casinos or betting shops. Both are important to local communities. The James Bond view of casinos is slightly different from the reality in that most of the big cities in the UK will have casinos with customers who see it as an important part of their leisure choice, but in reality, spend very little.  We need to talk about gambling more too.  Whether it be individually or with friends and families. One of the key differences which separates gambling from alcohol is that if you have an alcohol problem it’s self-evident. With gambling-related problems it can be less obvious.

We have just launched a social media campaign which encourages setting deposit limits and understanding the risk involved in betting and gaming. Gambling is a fun activity which many people in the UK enjoy on a monthly basis and see it as a leisure activity.   We need to look very carefully and help those who have a problem and who are more vulnerable in that space and we need to understand the key drivers.

EGR Compliance: Why has the BGC chosen to look at introducing a code of practice for VIP players and operator inducements?

BS:  The creation of a code of conduct for VIP players was included within the five safer gambling commitments outlined when the BGC launched last year and that work has been ongoing ever since. Our members have recognised that’s an area where they need to do more, and they are doing more. In the visits that I’ve made to our members, firstly I’ve seen how small the numbers of premium customers are and secondly, our members are already taking massive steps to look carefully at affordability, staging interventions at various stages of the customer journey and keeping a close eye on those customers.

EGR Compliance: You’ve set a target for the implementation of the code by H1 2020, do you feel you can deliver this code in the timescale given?

BS:  We certainly expect to have the code ready to go during the first quarter of 2020 because as I’ve said work is currently ongoing.

EGR Compliance: What input have you had on the code from other organisations like GambleAware and the UKGC?

BS:  We’ve had discussions and the work is at an early stage, but we will be including both of those organisations and other third-party organisations and charities going forward. I think that’s vital to the success of the code going forward. It’s got to be inclusive. The industry can’t just go away and come up with something and expect it to be embraced. It’s got to work its way through all our various partners to make sure that they feel we are doing the right thing and if we push back on something, explain why we’re pushing back on it. There are a whole range of things we need to be careful of in respect of premium customers and affordability, especially GDPR. We’re not FCA regulated so we don’t have visibility of everything involved in increased scrutiny on individuals.

EGR Compliance: An industry-funded report recently claimed that over-regulation in the UK was driving more players towards so-called black-market operators, in your opinion to what extent is this true and how is the BGC working to arrest this trend?

BS:  I do think the threat of the black market and unregulated sites around the world is something we must recognise and forms part of the difference between the online and retail sector. We believe the black market in the UK is worth about £1.4bn or 1.2% of turnover and around 200,000 (2.2%) of UK gamblers have used an unlicensed operator site within the last 12 months. That’s the results of the research we’ve undertaken. Regulators, government and politicians need to be conscious of the unintended consequences of having something that isn’t frictionless. We try and work with our members to make sure that players’ enjoyment is frictionless, and I think that’s an important part of keeping people away from the black market. It’s about striking that balance and if you look at other markets across the world you can see the dangers of too much restriction which then drives an industry underground. I don’t believe in prohibition. Prohibition didn’t work in the US during the 1920s and 1930s. What we really need is a balance.

EGR Compliance: In your opinion, is the UK market over-regulated?

BS:  I think we have a lot of regulation and it’s properly regulated. I’m not convinced that we need a new gambling act as many of the political parties have said. What is the phrase used, ‘an analogue law in a digital age’? I think this doesn’t apply. I was involved in the gaming industry when the 1968 act was being unveiled and I was also heavily involved with the rewriting of the 1968 act into the current 2005 UK Gambling Act. The difference between the 1968 act and the 2005 act was that in those days everything was written into the legislation itself. This contrasts with the 2005 Gambling Act where it’s very much an enabling piece of legislation, which is changed and added to via secondary legislation. I’m very happy to have this discussion with the Gambling Commission and with DCMS, but I think there’s an enormous amount that you can do under the current act. I’m not sure you need a new act of parliament. What you need to do is make sure that the things that are being undertaken fit under the current regulatory process. If you look at it, the Gambling Commission has an enormous amount of power in comparison to other regulators around the world.

EGR Compliance: Neil McArthur recently challenged the industry to develop a code of conduct for game design by spring 2020. What is the BGC doing to deliver on this challenge?

BS:  We are working on game design and looking at all the things in games that encourage people to be responsible in their gambling. We clearly need to look at that and it is a strand of work that is ongoing.

EGR Compliance: Does this need to stem from loot boxes?

BS:  I think people have a bit of a misunderstanding about loot boxes.  Some people think that gaming operators also have loot boxes.  That simply is not true and I had to ask someone what a loot box was! It is up to others to decide what regulation should apply to loot boxes, but it is also part of a conversation we should be having within families.

Looking at gambling from an operator perspective, it’s almost impossible for any underage individuals to set up a gambling account unless they were either lying or using a parent’s card. One of the issues surrounding underage drinking was parents who thought it would be a good idea to buy their children alcohol and let them drink it, and I think we’ve moved on from that. If you look at the UKGC’s latest gambling by young people survey, the trend is going in the right direction. It wasn’t reported as such, but it is and shows most children who gamble do so within a proper legal framework (playing cards and The National Lottery when allowed at 16). So, I think we’re moving in the right direction, but we need to make sure people understand what the link between loot boxes might be with gambling behaviour at later stages of life.

[quote]It’s about striking that balance and if you look at other markets across the world you can see the dangers of too much restriction which then drives an industry underground. I don’t believe in prohibition. Prohibition didn’t work in the US during the 1920s and 1930s. What we really need is a balance.[/quote]

EGR Compliance: How important is it that the online gambling industry speaks with one voice?

BS:  It’s vital as an industry that we work together, that’s not only across the BGC but also BACTA and the other associations we have within this space. We know from experience you’re never going to get anywhere with government unless you all sing from the same hymn sheet and work together. We as an industry operate different products and in different styles, but at the end of the day this is one industry and you’re only going to achieve things together and not on your own.

EGR Compliance: What part did the BGC play in the development and agreement of the five safer gambling pledges released earlier this year?

BS:  Obviously the BGC didn’t exist at that point but the RGA, the ABB and the National Casino Forum have been involved heavily because every one of those 10 companies which made the commitments are members of one association or another. So yes, it did and absolutely it will going forward. I will be chairing our safer gambling committee which will be looking at the results of all this work and developing it across the whole of the industry. The committee will be made up of our members.  I think it’s great the work that has been undertaken and the 10 operators should absolutely be commended for doing this, but I think we won’t achieve real change unless the entire industry signs up to the same standards.

EGR Compliance: Should operators be made to fund treatment for gambling-related harm in the UK?

BS:  I am not a fan of statutory anything. I think statutory is by its nature, because of legislation, inflexible. So, personally, and this is may be different from some of our members, I’m not in favour of any statutory levy. I think the voluntary system should be made to work. The danger of any statutory system is that you are at the whim of any entity which decides how much you are going to contribute. I think we need to be conscious of the size of our industry and indeed the scope of our industry. There are some very small companies which I am keen to help and some firms which have been hit very hard by the changing high street and the changes made to the gambling machines they operate. We must be sure that the ‘centre of the community’ feel for retail operators is kept going and, based on my experiences, betting shop owners and managers are clear that the customer comes first and that licensees look after their customers. We need to make sure that whatever we do works for everyone of whatever size and businesses are able to function as part of that.

EGR Compliance: Now that the BGC is up and running, what are your objectives for the coming year?

BS:  We haven’t set out a strategy as such, part of our work going forward will be developing that but is clearly around safer gambling as our primary function. Our primary objective is making ourselves a more responsible industry by improving our reputation with our stakeholders, whoever they may be and working with our members to achieve that.

EGR Compliance: As a former trustee of GambleAware, do you feel that the charity is making in-roads in reducing gambling-related harm?

BS:  I was a trustee of GambleAware for three years and I know both the current chairman and chief executive. I’m very keen that we as the BGC work with them. It’s important we work closely with the NHS and I think it’s great that they are now taking much more of an interest in this industry. As an industry, I feel the work we’re doing around treatment and education is vital in changing the narrative. The work with teachers that YGAM is doing and the work indirectly that GamCare is doing with young people is vital in improving people’s understanding. So, I think that GambleAware has a very important part to play in this aim and we need to work closely with the Gambling Commission too.