The complete picture: Can the industry's key stakeholders join forces to create a single customer view?

The likelihood of a single customer view (SCV) being implemented across the UK’s online gambling industry increased significantly in October after the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) ruled that a conceptual model of the software would not be in breach of existing data laws.

The SCV is being designed to create a holistic view of a gambling consumer across multiple gambling businesses so that the sector can put up a united front against gambling-related harm, especially for those players that hop between several different accounts and operators.

Leading operators in the UK, especially those that make up the bulk of the Betting and Gaming Council (BGC), have made significant strides in responsible gambling in recent years by introducing markers of harm, monitoring software and safer gambling tools, as well as source of funds and affordability checks across their suite of digital products.

However, some operators are doing more than others. There are leaders in responsible gambling, just as there are leaders in product, price and innovation. This means that the user experience at operator A may not be as safe as the user experience at operator B, despite both businesses being subject to the same licensing codes of conduct as dictated by the UK Gambling Commission (UKGC).

The SCV solution is being created to solve this problem, as explained best by former UKGC CEO Neil McArthur. The regulator has been encouraging the industry to identify and develop an SCV that fits its requirements since a conference way back in February 2020, where hundreds of gambling industry stakeholders joined forces to try and determine how such a platform could work in practice.

McArthur, who has since been ushered out the backdoor following the collapse of Football Index, said: “We recognise that keeping a customer safe where operators currently only have a partial view of a customer’s behaviour is a challenge. That is why we are bringing together experts from outside and within the gambling industry to explore how technology could create a single customer view, as it has the potential to significantly improve customer protection.

“I’m really looking forward to seeing what is possible. We are constantly looking for opportunities to reduce gambling-related harm and there is always more to be done. Using technology to facilitate a single view of consumer activity is one of a range of actions we are pursuing to make gambling safer,” he added.

Dangers of data

The ICO conclusion that cleared the conceptual SCV platform of GDPR concerns was hardly concrete, but it has turned the SCV into a reality. The UKGC foresees the software becoming a licensing requirement for UK operators, just as self-exclusion register GAMSTOP did before it. The regulator has acknowledged that an SCV – which could in the end take various forms – is an “ambitious and complex” undertaking, but that won’t be allowed to be used as an excuse by the regulated industry.

“The publication of the ICO’s report provides an important and helpful steer on how an SCV could be delivered in accordance with data protection law,” said UKGC executive director Tim Miller in October. “However, there are still plenty of issues and complexities that need to be addressed as part of a pilot phase of work.

“At this stage, we have no plans to mandate a particular SCV solution – that is for the industry to develop and test – but we do expect the industry to demonstrate the impact its piloted solution has against the challenge we set and to move swiftly towards trialling its SCV solution,” he added.

So, there we have it. The UKGC is clear it wants a solution and it wants one as soon as possible. However, what that solution will actually look like remains painfully unclear, in just about every department. Which data will be harvested? Who will build it? Who will oversee it? Who will pay for it? At present, the unanswered questions are infinite.

Will Mace, founder of EQ-Connect and former head of Kindred Futures, is one person who might be able to provide some answers. “What the UKGC would like to happen is for the industry, under the auspices of the BGC, to take the steer they’ve been given and design a trial, and then select a technology partner to build the required components of that trial, before running the trial and evaluating the results with a view to deploying an industry-wide solution in a relatively short timeframe,” he says.

Will Mace, EQ-Connect

EQ-Connect is a start-up specifically designed to solve the SCV problem. Mace and his fellow co-founder, Jeremy Harding-Roberts, an industry fraud specialist formerly of Betfair and Betclic, have been involved in various stages of the development process and intend to take part in the tender procedure for the UK version of the solution – at least once the UKGC’s requirements become clear.

The company collects and analyses raw player data from gambling operators to provide users with a cross-company risk score out of 100, after drawing conclusions from behavioural patterns. While operators have been calculating their own risk scores for some time, their data collection methods are often different, which leads to standardisation issues, as touched upon by McArthur previously.

EQ-Connect hopes to provide a fix by collecting raw data across a consumer’s preferred playing sites and brands, before crunching the numbers to calculate an overall risk score of up to 100. “What we ideally want is the raw player behavioural data without operators having already interpreted it,” Mace tells EGR. “Because if the data has been interpreted by one operator, you can’t mesh it together with interpreted data from another operator as you need raw data to create a fair single view.”

Mace envisages the following timeline: 12 months for the build and design combination process in collaboration with the UKGC, BGC, ICO and their chosen technology partner, followed by a 12-month pilot across a select few operators before rolling it out more broadly as a licensing requirement – so long as it works as anticipated. Self-exclusion scheme GAMSTOP, which is a far simpler idea on paper, followed a similar process, but even that was bounced around between providers and beset by technical delays, long before all firms were able to comply.

Time for a tender

Even if building the actual technology behind the SCV sounds like a bit of a nightmare, you can bet your bottom dollar that EQ-Connect won’t be the only company in the running for the contract. Gibraltar-based consultancy Crucial Compliance is also in the process of putting together a partnership of like-minded individuals to build an SCV and is currently awaiting a cash injection.

Crucial Compliance is planning to build a generic version of the software which can then be adapted for specific territories, because the UK version would likely be deemed too aggressive or intrusive in most other markets due to the exacting demands of government and the UKGC. Another element which makes the initial product easier to develop elsewhere is the national ID service utilised by most European countries, including Sweden and the Netherlands. There is no such thing in the UK.

“The problem with regulators is they want everything, and everything isn’t going to be possible on day one,” says Crucial Compliance CEO Paul Foster, who spent more than a decade in charge of compliance departments for gambling companies including bwin.party, Ladbrokes Coral and GVC.

Paul Foster, Crucial Compliance

“With this situation, what they need to accept is that it makes sense to build the base level version first, and then enhance it to localised regulatory requirements. You cannot go out there and build something for everybody that logs everything because there will just be too much data,” he adds.

The amount of data in play and which types of data will be processed present a huge hurdle. The number of data points the UKGC would like to see integrated will almost certainly clash with those favoured by the industry, but in the end it will come down to capability and cost.

“The technology can either enable or it can constrain,” says Mace, laying down the gauntlet, but could we end up with a situation where the eventual solution is an unhappy medium that has been settled for by both regulators and operators because the original concept was too convoluted, too expensive or too
intricate?

The UKGC has shied away from providing specific requirements having urged the industry to show some initiative, but Northridge Law partner Melanie Ellis has a reasonable idea of what interim UKGC CEO Andrew Rhodes and his Birmingham-based colleagues would like to see included.

“The type of data the UKGC envisages the industry would be sharing includes player metrics like total withdrawals, total losses, frequency of play, session lengths and average bet size, as well as their different reactions to bonus offers and responsible gambling interactions and interventions,” she told The Gambling Files podcast, which is hosted by Finder Media managing director Fintan Costello and Casino International managing editor Jon Bruford.

Let’s consider for a second that bet365, widely considered the most technically able and agile gambling operator on these shores, processes thousands of bets per second from customers who wagered £2,045 per second combined in 2019. How is data for every one of those consumers, across all the data points listed above by Ellis, going to be managed and presented on a platform alongside the same data from another 10, 20 or 50 operators?

Every question seems to lead to more questions, and the answers to each are increasingly uncertain. Bet365 is one of the industry leaders in terms of responsible gambling measures, alongside rivals including Sky Bet, but these companies have spent millions of pounds on enhancing consumer protection measures.

Value for money

The industry will almost certainly foot the bill for the SCV through voluntary contributions, enforcement action or by other means, and while an advancement in cloud data over the last few years has made the technical ramifications easier to facilitate, does the UKGC truly understand the size of the chequebook required for such an enormous project? Foster doesn’t think so. “Somebody might pass a monthly affordability check at company A which is great, but we don’t know what their procedure is,” he says, increasingly exasperated.

“They might just put their finger in the air and say this customer looks good, but how exactly are they calculating that? Multiply that issue for the amount of data points the UKGC has talked about including, and you will never be able to develop an SCV because the data processing software alone would cost millions,” he adds.

Foster is right to point out the discrepancy between affordability checking processes at UK-licensed gambling operators. A monthly affordability cap looked certain to be imposed on the industry just six months ago as part of the UK government’s ongoing review of the Gambling Act 2005, but that threat has all but disappeared following the removal of McArthur as UKGC CEO and a reorganisation at DCMS that has resulted in Mid Worcestershire MP Nigel Huddleston losing responsibility for the review.

Huddleston was first replaced by friend to the industry John Whittingdale, but that obligation now rests with Chris Philp, who was appointed less than two months ago during Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Westminster reshuffle. Commenting on the ICO’s so-called Regulatory Sandbox report, Philp said: “I welcome the ICO’s findings that data can be shared safely and securely between operators to prevent problem gamblers running up crippling losses. It is essential that more action is taken to prevent people becoming addicted to gambling to the point that lives can be ruined.”

He added: “This is an important step towards protecting vulnerable people, and operators must now come together in order to quickly deliver a meaningful solution.”

During McArthur’s reign, the industry expected the worst and the BGC, favouring safety in numbers, instructed its members to get ahead of regulation by developing a sector-wide affordability solution. “The BGC tried to do affordability and it fell apart because everyone went in a different direction,” recalls Foster.

We have since ended up with Flutter shouting from the rooftops about its affordability triple-step solution and Entain doing the same over its Advanced Responsibility & Care (ARC) programme, as ESG becomes an increasingly attractive proposition for investors.

“This industry is not good at working together, even with a gun to its head,” adds Foster.

It is not too difficult to imagine a similarly fragmented situation unfolding with the SCV. The data might be managed by a third party, but will that independent adjudicator also be required to intervene when customers are beginning to overspend or chase losses? “What are operators expected to do with the data once they have it?” asked Ellis on episode eight of The Gambling Files podcast.

“Unless there are a standardised set of actions to take, then everyone will carry on doing their own thing with the information available, just as they are now. This is already happening with affordability expectations, which are there but have not been specified,” she adds.

For podcast co-host and former Google igaming industry head Fintan Costello, that’s a problem. He said: “From a game theory perspective, it’s your basic tragedy of the commons, where you perform the minimum intervention, hope that everybody else overreacts, and then all that spend comes to you.”

That might sound cynical, especially considering the industry has just joined forces for Safer Gambling Week, but these companies are under severe pressure from shareholders and in intense competition with each other. The honeymoon period enjoyed by the online gambling industry throughout the Covid-19 pandemic will be well and truly over by Q4 2021, with most operators predicting double-digit downturns year-on-year as sports margins bite and leisure spend returns to other sectors. Gains, however small, will need to be earned elsewhere, but hopefully not at the expense of consumer protection.

Costello is also concerned that the SCV will not apply in a retail environment, which could lead to further infighting between land-based and digital stakeholders at a time when the industry is supposed to be displaying a united front. Equivalency was a major problem when the retail segment suffered major losses from FOBT stake cuts as online revenue ran riot, but could the opposite be true if the SCV were to be imposed for online operators only?

“Thumbs up for the general concept, I applaud it,” Costello tells EGR. “But I think the industry has every right to complain about it. This will apply to online, but what is to stop a consumer walking into a casino or a newsagents and spending way beyond their means? There is no SCV there.”

He adds: “People are addicted to the National Lottery and scratchcards and it should all be part of the same thing. Is it good to start somewhere? Absolutely. Should it be rolled out across all products? Absolutely. Is it incredibly difficult to do and will it take a decade to implement? Probably.”

Not everyone is of the belief that it must be difficult, however. There might be some integrity issues to be ironed out as concerns have been raised about VIP managers using the platform to poach highly profitable customers from rivals with irresponsible bonus offers, not to mention the fact that problem gamblers display many of the same data points as the industry’s most lucrative customers. On the flip of that coin, what is to stop gambling operators from using the platform and its deluge of data to identify their least profitable players and restricting all the winning accounts until only the losers are left?

The remedy here is a fairly simple one, and that would be to ensure that nobody commercially driven, or incentivised by commission, has access to the platform. It should be left in the hands of an independent third party or with the compliance department. Mace believes there will always be scare stories, put out there to spread fear of ill-gotten gains by those across the industry who perhaps never wanted an SCV to materialise in the first place. He is the first to admit there will be difficulties but remains convinced the actual management of the platform should not pose a point of friction.

“There should be a Governance Committee in place that evaluates what each company is doing against the contract before it properly gets audited by one of the big auditors to determine whether it is functioning as it’s supposed to or whether it is going in the right direction,” he tells EGR.

“I also think that the overseeing of it is relatively straightforward – a private company or consortium of companies can build the solution to the BGC’s specifications and then its performance is reported on and audited on a fairly regular basis,” he adds.

In EQ-Connect’s original proposal to the BGC last year, the firm suggested the formation of a Governance Committee fronted by a number of independent representatives from the UKGC and the ICO as observers to try and guard against any potential for abuse.

One thing that has become abundantly clear, and is a common theme as commented on by just about every contributor in this piece, is that the industry could make this incredibly challenging task a whole lot easier by finally setting its differences aside and committing to work together.

“The practicalities of it are really difficult, but this is a great opportunity for the industry to take the bull by the horns and just get ahead of something for once,” Costello tells EGR. “I’d actively encourage anyone to endorse this, the BGC being the obvious one, and get behind it to get ahead of the curve.”

I contacted some top-tier operators for this piece, but each time I was redirected to the BGC, which said: “We note the report from the ICO and will now work through its findings in detail. Work on the industry’s own trial has been ongoing for quite some time, and we now look forward to progressing with it in discussion with the Gambling Commission
and ICO.”

The customer view is singular, but this has to be a team effort for it to succeed. As for now, only time will tell if a cross-industry SCV alliance has truly been formed.