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The UK Gambling Commission's latest consultation response will require operators to report regulatory returns more consistently and will allow the regulator to see "much more quickly" the impact regulatory changes are having on the industry, a senior official from the Gambling Commission has said.
The Gambling Commission published the “frequency of regulatory returns” consultation responses on March 27, which will amend licence condition 15.3.1, requiring all licence holders to submit regulatory returns quarterly.
“[These] changes mean we can get a picture across the industry more consistently. Many operators have historically shown data every quarter, but it’s not been consistent across the industry. This will strengthen the data we have access to and be able to better evaluate impacts,” said Gambling Commission executive director Tim Miller during a speech at the KnowNow Player Protection Forum 2024 on Wednesday (March 27).
Additionally, the regulator will remove several questions required in the returns and harmonise the reporting periods across the industry, which will “reduce the burden on operators”, as the regulator “looked for areas to relieve the regulatory burden without impacting licensing objectives”, Miller said.
The success of the Gambling Act review will hinge on the Gambling Commission’s ability to assess whether changes have delivered their intended regulatory outcomes, according to Miller.
To ensure the changes have their intended consequences of making gambling safer and fairer and to ensure it is crime-free, the gambling regulator outlined its approach to evaluating the impacts of the white paper earlier this month, promising to assess changes as a package and some individually.
The National Centre for Social Research (NatCen) has been hired by both the Gambling Commission and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) to design a framework with options for process and impact evaluations, which Miller said shows they are willing to “put their money where their mouth is”.
Miller added that the Gambling Commission is also looking at addressing black market concerns and increasingly engaging with various industry stakeholders through several initiatives, including its consumer voice research and the creation of an industry forum.
When it comes to the threat of driving players to the black market, the regulator is “taking it seriously”; however, “so far, haven’t seen any heavyweight research that would stand up to scrutiny that players are moving on a scale”, Miller said.
The Gambling Commission has only identified a trend of self-excluded players going to the black market to circumvent their self-imposed bans, instead of gamblers being driven to the black market by changing regulatory standards.
To counter this, in the last six months, the regulator referred over 7,000 website URLs to Google resulting in them being removed from search results.
In 2023, the regulator also issued 452 cease-and-desist orders, including 161 referred to social media site Facebook, which resulted in 212 instances of the supply of illegal gambling being disrupted.
"I plead to some of you, especially operators if you have any intelligence in this space, we will take it seriously, and the more information we receive the more work we can do," Miller said.
The gambling regulator also said it is working with payment providers to prevent funds from being transferred to illegal operators and with search engines to remove illegal sites from search results.
Additionally, on a global scale, the Gambling Commission has been pushing for a more coordinated focus from the International Association of Gaming Regulators (IAGR).
