To stay ahead in the messaging game when it comes to responsible gaming, U.S. gaming operators need to learn from their counterparts in the United Kingdom, concluded a panel headlined by Caesars executive Jan Jones Blackhurst at G2E on Monday afternoon.
In the U.K., a proliferation of gambling advertisements, combined with several responsible gaming black eyes – such as a high-profile failure to enforce a self-exclusion policy – has fostered a public perception, warranted or otherwise, that problem gambling in the country is on the rise.
A group of local government councils has called for greater restrictions on betting advertisements on television and mobile devices, arguing that they have become ubiquitous to the point where children are being targeted.
The panel reckoned that the situation could have been mitigated by engaging in more proactive messaging and marketing efforts, in addition to creating stronger internal cultures of compliance.
John Hagan, a U.K.-based gaming attorney with Harris Hagan, argued that while U.K. gaming companies weren’t necessarily doing anything wrong or illegal with their approaches to responsible gaming, the fact that they weren’t proactive in marketing their efforts to the public has left them fighting an uphill battle.
“The industry hasn’t been doing nothing; they’ve been doing what they perceive to be quite a lot, but the standards are going up,” he said.
Operators and manufacturers in the U.S., Hagan reckoned, would be wise to take heed.
Jones Blackhurst echoed Hagan’s remarks, arguing that that it is in the industry’s “enlightened self-interest” to make responsible gaming a CEO-level priority and to disseminate it throughout the organizational culture.
Doing this, she argued, is the only way to stay ahead of “potentially destructive narratives advanced by the media.”
Hagan also insinuated that gaming manufacturers in the U.S. would be wise to prepare themselves for the heightened responsible-gaming scrutiny that U.K. manufacturers are currently facing from regulators.
This scrutiny includes questions specifically for details about structural game characteristics, environmental factors and deployment of interventions, as well as a call for insights that would help assess the impacts of programs used by operators to mitigate gambling-related harm.
Connie Jones, director of responsible gaming at the Association of Gaming Equipment Manufacturers, argued that while manufacturers take responsible gaming seriously, it is not incumbent on them to be more proactive on the issue until such an approach is specifically warranted by research.
“Manufacturers are not in the mental health business,” she said. “Manufacturers are very willing to work with the problem gambling community to develop any technology that has actually been proven by research to have been effective. Otherwise, it doesn’t make sense.”
“Players are not going to play a game that has a regulatory speed bump versus one that does not,” added Jones.
