UK's Big Five Gambling Operators Establish Independent Responsible Gambling Committee

United Kingdom's most eminent gambling and betting brands – the so-called, Big Five – has agreed to establish a new independent committee that will be devising plans on how to optimize the allocation of responsible gambling funds and problem gambling treatment.

Lord Chadlington of Conservative Party will be the organization's chair, who was approached by the five operators to lead the operations of this newly founded body.

A Five Month Plan

The five companies in question are:

• bet365
• Flutter Entertainment (Betfair and Paddy Power owner)
• GVC (Labrokes Coral)
• Sky Betting and Gaming
• William Hill

Aside from Chadlington...

...there will be more appointments and all of them will be announced in September. By the end of the year, the committee will also publish “recommendations on the most appropriate mechanisms for receiving and administering funds and monitoring their deployment.”

Administrative covers will be paid by operators while members of the committee are doing this purely voluntarily, meaning they are not getting financial compensation for their work here.

Everyone's Invited to Contribute

Comments Lord Chadlington:

“The committee will consult widely to formulate its recommendations taking account in particular of the views of government, regulators, the third sector, gambling operators and those with lived experience.

I am pleased to accept the invitation to chair this committee particularly as the five gambling companies are committed to implementing any reasonable recommendations it may make. I will announce the membership of the committee by mid-September.”

Deep Commitment

The five brands have been committed to making gambling safer in the UK for some time now...

...as in June, for instance, when they agreed to raise the voluntary contribution to funding problem gambling from 0.1% to 1% by 2023 – which will, in total, reach $67.1 million in total by that year. Also, all of these brands will be providing updates on customer safeguard improvements and will improve their marketing messaging so that it's more responsible.

Effective since August 1st is a whistle-to-whistle band on advertising during live sports broadcasts...

...while GVC even called for a complete ban on broadcast advertising by gambling operators and pushes forward for ending football shirt sponsorship deals, which is an initiative also adopted by Paddy Power and their Save Our Shirt campaign.

An Important Step Forward

Five companies' spokesperson was quoted as saying:

“We are absolutely committed to providing further funding toward treatment and other responsible gambling initiatives, and we believe the committee will identify and recommend how best to deploy effectively this investment. We believe this is an important step towards creating a safer gambling environment and look forward to reviewing and implementing its recommendations later this year.”

In 1947, Lord Chadlington founded the PR firm, Shandwick. He is also a non-executive director of Britax, childcare company...

...and he is also a president of the Whitney Conservative constituency association. He was a Director of the charity Action on Addiction from 1999 until 2007.

Source:

“Leading UK operators to establish RG funding committee”, igamingbusiness.com, August 2, 2019.