Responsible Gambling Index
Responsible Gambling Most people play games of chance for recreation. There are, however, some people who have a serious gambling problem that impacts negatively on their lives and the lives of their friends and family. Gamblers Anonymous. The Responsible Gambling Council (RGC) is dedicated to reducing gambling risks through innovation, awareness and improved safeguards. We believe that gambling should never come at a human cost.
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Responsible Gambling Resources
- DownloadNCPG’s Guidelines for Payment Processing
- DownloadNCPG’s Responsible Gaming Principles for Sports Gambling Legislation
- Download NCPG’s Resolution on the Legalization of Sports Gambling (Feb 2017)
- DownloadNCPG’s Fantasy Sports Consumer Protection Guidelines Final December 4 2015
- DownloadNCPG’s Internet Responsible Gambling Standards
- DownloadNCPG Compliance Comparison Online Responsible Gaming Regulations Updated
- DownloadGRADE Social Game Consumer Protection Guidelines v3
- DownloadNCPG Affiliate Guide for Casino Employee Responsible Gaming Program March 2016
Guidelines for Payment Processing
Excessive spending on gambling, leading to significant financial harm, is a hallmark of gambling problems. Each type of payment—from cash to credit cards—has different structural characteristics that may impact problem gambling. Innovations in payments technology and changes in consumer behavior continue to change, shifting risk and protective factors as a result. Gambling operators, vendors, payment processors, financial institutions, regulators – and people who gamble – all have important roles to play in minimizing harm. These guidelines are based on an informed consumer choice model.
Read the full press release here.
Initiative: 1% for Responsible Gambling
Gambling affiliate BettingUSA.com, a licensed US online gambling affiliate, has pledged to donate one percent of its earnings to the National Council on Problem Gambling (NCPG) in order to help minimize the harms that will likely occur through the expansion of gambling and sports betting in the US. Together the two organizations call on other affiliates in the legal US gambling space to match BettingUSA’s leadership by joining the 1% Initiative. “NCPG advocates for states to earmark 1% of gambling revenues to responsible gaming and problem gambling programs, and since most states fall well short of that target, we believe that it is in the best interests of the industry to contribute,” BettingUSA.com’s Steve Ruddock said. “BettingUSA.com is proud to spearhead this initiative alongside NCPG. We call on all gambling affiliates, and anyone else involved in the industry, to join us.” Read the full press release here.
Participants will receive a digital emblem to proudly display on their digital media. To join the initiative, contact Barbara Rollins, Deputy Director for Advancement, at BarbaraR@ncpgambling.org
Responsible Gaming Principles for Sports Gambling Legislation
NCPG’s Responsible Gaming Principles for Sports Gambling Legislation provide a basis for new regulations and legislation that may be enacted to allow sports betting. The principles will help protect individuals, gaming companies, and legislators by assisting the creation of reasonable efforts to prevent harm and provide treatment.
Download NCPG’s Responsible Gaming Principles for Sports Gambling Legislation
Resolution on the Legalization of Sports Gambling
NCPG’s Resolution on the Legalization of Sports Gambling calls upon all stakeholders in the discussion over legalized sports gambling to recognize the potential impact on gambling addiction. The resolution offers direct actions for legislators and regulators, leagues and teams, and the media to minimize harm as a result of increased gambling participation.
Download NCPG’s Resolution on the Legalization of Sports Gambling
Responsible Gaming Education Week
NCPG supports Responsible Gaming Education Week and urges members to work with gaming operators and regulators to train employees and raise awareness of gambling problems and responsible gaming solutions during RGEW and year around. For more information goto: https://www.americangaming.org/advocacy/toolkits/responsible-gaming
NCPG’s Fantasy Sports Consumer Protection Guidelines
The guidelines outline essential age verification, player information, self-exclusion and data and customer assistance provisions. These guidelines were based on NCPG’s best-practice Internet Responsible Gambling Standards and adapted specifically for the fantasy sports industry. The guidelines were approved by the NCPG Board of Directors on December 4, 2015.
NCPG’s Internet Responsible Gambling Standards
The National Council on Problem Gambling has developed these standards to help guide discussions among all stakeholders on internet gambling, including operators, regulators, advocates and the public.
The standards contain specific recommendations in the areas of policy, staff training, informed decision-making, assisting players, self-exclusion, advertising and promotion, game and site features, and working with research.
NCPG reviewed current internet responsible gaming codes and regulations from around the world (see Appendix A) to guide the development of this standard. The final recommendations in this document flow from our 40 years of experience in problem gambling issues, existing international codes (in particular the Responsible Gambling Council’s draft internet gambling standards), empirical evidence and feedback from experts in the field including operators, regulators, researchers, clinicians and advocates. We have also considered Federal laws governing the online purchase of age-controlled products like alcohol and tobacco. The NCPG standard is a work in progress as internet gambling-related legislation, regulation and technology continue to evolve rapidly. The graphical and interactive structure of the internet provides an opportunity to create informed consumers with access to a variety of information designed to encourage safe choices and discourage unsafe behavior, including through setting personal limits and self-excluding. These programs can be improved by requiring operators to make de-identified play data (e.g., demographic, session, game and transaction data) publicly available. Analyzing actual player behavior leads to better understanding of gambling and problem gambling.
It is strongly recommended that operators and regulators consult with experts in the problem gambling field during the development and implementation of internet gambling. Problem gambling, like other diseases of addiction, will likely never be eliminated, but we must make better efforts to mitigate the damage. A portion of all gambling revenue must be dedicated to reduce the social costs of gambling addiction.
DownloadNCPG’s Internet Responsible Gaming Standards.
Public survey of online responsible gaming regulations
In spring 2014, NCPG commissioned Gambling Compliance to conduct a first-ever public survey of online responsible gaming regulations, finding states are off to a good start but still short of best practice.
DownloadNCPG Compliance Comparison Online Responsible Gaming Regulations Updated.
GRADE: Social Games Consumer Protection Guidelines
Version 3: October 21, 2013
DownloadGRADE Social Game Consumer Protection Guidelines v3
Social games with casino themes are among the fastest growing segments of the game industry. Yet significant uncertainly remains about the definitions and risks. Indeed, many social game developers and operators, including major gaming companies, argue that social games do not meet the definition of gambling and therefore requires no regulation. NCPG does not take an opinion on the legality of social games or whether they should be regulated.
NCPG believes that consumer protection standards are important as it is likely that some users of social games with casino themes may experience negative consequences. Operators benefit by protecting a significant source of revenue, providing good customer service and engaging with regulators and legislators in a positive manner. Regulators have an obligation under the “precautionary principle” to protect the public especially when faced with a brand new and fast-growing gambling-like activity. Organizations like the National Council have a duty to advocate for consumer protection.
Many social games with casino themes utilize features that are regulated, prohibited or not possible in regulated gaming environments. Some of these features are argued by some to contribute to greater risk of problem gambling. They include high frequency and speed of play, lack of minimum age policy and enforcement, “opaque” game mechanics, no specific oversight or consumer protection, unclear differentiation between social and “real money” games, among others.
The intent of the standards is to facilitate discussions about consumer protection among operators, regulators, legislators, consumer advocates and the public. While it is likely that many social games encourage lengthy play, our focus is placed on social games with casino themes that are free-to-play but have ways in which the consumer can spend real money. As noted, some argue that it is likely that some users are currently or at-risk for gambling addiction, and that as a result they may spend excessive amounts of time and money on social games with casino themes, leading to negative consequences.
As with internet gambling, the graphical and interactive structure of the social media provides an opportunity to create informed consumers with access to a variety of information designed to encourage safe choices and discourage unsafe behavior. Some game features could be utilized to promote responsible play, such as granting coins for setting voluntary limits, or for reading through the educational information.
These guidelines are a work in progress as social gambling continues to rapidly. As we collect more information on actual player behavior we will be able to further determine what, if any, consumer protection and regulation is necessary. We encourage the social game developers and operators to work with NCPG to provide this data. We encourage feedback and comment and believe all stakeholders have an interest in reducing possible harms from social games with casino themes.
NCPG Affiliate Guide for Casino Responsible Gaming Training Programs March 2016
DownloadNCPG Affiliate Guide for Casino Employee Responsible Gaming Program March 2016
This guide was developed by the State Affiliate Chapters (“Affiliates”) of the National Council on Problem Gambling (“NCPG”) to provide guidance for Affiliates to conduct and advise on the training of casino employees. While this document was initially developed for the training of casino employees, the basic principles likely apply to any type of gaming and for community awareness programs.
Responsible Gambling (“RG”) for Flutter is fundamental to every element of the Group’s strategy.
Across our global business we provide an entertaining betting experience to over 13 million customers and our priority is ensuring that during their visits to our sites and shops they can stay in control and only bet what they can afford. However, we recognise that for a small minority of customers, gambling stops being fun, and they are at risk of harm.
All markets have their own regulation and societal context, and we apply our principles in that context with the ultimate objective of building a sustainable and responsible business in each market.
The detail in this section pre-dates our merger with The Stars Group and relates to the pre-merger Flutter business. It will be updated soon with inforrmation from across the new Group. In the meantime, information about RG in the former TSG businesses can be found here.
1) We build our business on customers having fun, and harmful play has no place
To ensure that all our customers gamble responsibly, we have robust and wideranging policies on RG and routinely engage with customers we think might be at risk. The tools we have in place range from deposit and loss limits to full selfexclusion protocols and we endeavour to make these processes as seamless and easy to use as possible. We continually assess and evolve these processes to ensure we are doing everything possible to protect our customers.
Every customer is different, and we know that not all customers will choose to proactively use our tools, so we also actively monitor our customer base using our Customer Activity and Awareness Programme (“CAAP”). CAAP is our proprietary machine learning model which uses an algorithm to identify customers who may need intervention, based on their behaviour.
This year we enhanced the model to analyse over 100 customer behaviours daily and assign risk scores to each active customer. Proactive interventions regularly take place off the back of these scores which greatly increases our capabilities to identify at risk customers early in the lifecycle and intervene before gambling becomes a problem for them.
2) We educate our customers and staff about responsible play
This isn’t a dry, faceless process. We have real people trained to call and email customers every day to intervene when we see they may be at risk of gambling related harm. Our specialist RG team make over 90,000 monthly RG awareness interactions across our Paddy Power and Betfair brands, and around 1,200 customer interaction calls per month.
We have recently rolled out CAAP 2.0 to our Sportsbet customers in Australia and are developing a model for our US business. Where we are concerned about customers we will not market to them. We have invested significantly to ensure protecting our customers is a key priority by refreshing and targeting our staff training around RG.
3) We have to talk, share and work with others to keep innovating in responsible gambling
An important part of our ongoing RG strategy is aimed at establishing the Group as one of the progressive voices in the industry and striving to raise the standards for our customers and stakeholders. We work with trade associations in all of our regulated markets, all of which have played an important role in establishing progressive, constructive self-regulation that enhances customer protection.
We made further significant steps towards driving the industry forward in 2019 by working with several leading operators in the UK to introduce industry Safer Gambling Commitments, a comprehensive set of measures devised to support the UK Gambling Commission’s National Strategy to Reduce Gambling Harm.
The five core Safer Gambling Commitments:
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- prevent underage gambling and protect young people
- increase support for treatment of gambling harm
- strengthen and expand codes of practice for advertising and marketing
- protect and empower our customers
- promote a culture of safer gambling
To ensure that these commitments are delivered with the transparency and authenticity they are intended, we form part of an industry working group with other operators under the Betting and Gaming Council (‘BGC’) and will regularly report publicly on progress of these commitments.
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4) We invest in always getting better at tackling the problem
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In the UK we continue to drive collaboration across the industry through our membership of the newly formed Betting and Gaming Council (“BGC”). We made further progress in our RG intentions including:
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- Research, treatment and education
- Our UK business continued to invest in RG. During 2019 we donated 0.1% of our UK Gross Gambling Yield to the research, education and treatment of problem gambling as encouraged by the Gambling Commission, and we would welcome the introduction of a levy to ensure all UK licensed operators do the same.
- In June 2019 we announced, along with the other big five operators, that we would raise our current 0.1% voluntary contribution of Gross Gambling Yield over the next four years to 1% in 2023 for the research, education and treatment of problem gambling. This tenfold increase will reach a contribution of approximately £60 million, a level which we intend to maintain in the future and we hope that the wider industry will follow suit.
- Whistle-to-whistle advertising ban
- In September 2019 the gambling industry followed through with its agreement to ban all pre-watershed gambling advertising during televised live sport in the UK. It is vital that we market responsibly and hope these restrictions have gone some way to address understandable concerns about the proliferation of advertising.
- Responsible gambling week
- We participated in the now annual joint UK and Ireland Responsible Gambling Week, collating activities across all online and retail gambling outlets across both countries. The week sees all retail and marketing changed to responsible gambling messaging as well as being displayed on site and all social media platforms. This year our Paddy Power brand used their marketing assets to create videos with ambassadors Ruby Walsh, Matt Chapman, Lizzie Kelly and Mick Fitzgerald in order to land the RG message in a way that would resonate with our audience. Events are set up internally for staff in our corporate offices to learn from problem gambling charities we support to make employees aware of how to spot possible signs of problem gambling but also to encourage everyone to consider how else we can improve our processes so that we can further protect our customers.
- Responsible gambling charities
- During 2019, we further supported the Government’s nominated charity GambleAware, as well as committing to a four-year funding plan through our Safer Gambling Commitments for the Young Gamblers Education Trust which aims to inform, educate and safeguard young people against problem gambling. In Ireland we are proud to have been a strong and leading advocate for the establishment of the Gambling Awareness Trust – an independent charity set up to fund research, education and treatment services to help minimise gambling related harm in Ireland. This initiative represents a significant increase in the amount of funding available to support organisations in Ireland.