Money and rights
The exemption for these casinos will apply from 16 May 2024 (the date on which the consultation response was published) and take account of any already submitted expansion plans. The government proposes that venues will be required to comply with all specified sliding scale requirements in order to access the enhanced gaming machine entitlement. When asked about the proposed minimum gambling area, table gaming area and non-gambling area requirements, the table gaming element received one-third less support than the other 2 requirements.
Your data will be used to inform the development of policy measures relating to the land-based sector. DCMS is consulting on policy options for measures relating to the land-based gambling sector. We welcome evidence from all parties with an interest in the way that gambling is regulated in Great Britain. Please upload any further evidence or any other information that should be considered in this consultation relating to licensing authority fees. Please provide any additional views or evidence on the potential impacts of raising licence fees here. What do you think are the potential impacts of raising licence fees on gambling companies?
We have considered the potential risk of harm from increasing the machine allowance and think that the mix of products is appropriate for the environment if the safer gambling tools described above are applied effectively. Of the other jurisdictions that apply a machine-to-table ratio, all currently permit a greater proportion of gaming machines compared to Great Britain. It has 75 customers for every gaming machine at busy times and could easily absorb 60 additional machines without impacting its wider leisure offer. Some licensing authorities, as well as the Local Government Association (LGA), specifically suggested that cumulative impact assessments (CIAs) should be introduced for gambling premises licences. However, licensing authority responses to our call for evidence suggested that further powers were needed to give them a real say on gambling premises in their areas and protect communities.
Call for evidence respondents provided a number of proposals for how the uptake of these tools could be increased in Great Britain. This has been supported by research by the Australian government Behavioural Economics team which found proactive sharing of activity statements, presented in a user-friendly format, could help customers spend less. A study of Norwegian gamblers found 34% accessed an activity statement when notified it was available, while another study found as few as 10% of Australian gamblers had done so (although they are not consistently available on Australian gambling platforms). Similarly, when presented with a free text box which encouraged reflection, the average deposit limit set by customers fell by 46%. For example, financial limits are the most widely used tool but can be set at levels which are clearly far beyond the means of most gamblers and therefore unlikely to mitigate harm. We have conducted our own estimate, and project that a universal limit set at £8.50 (as the midpoint in our consultation) would reduce online slots GGY by between £135 million and £185 million.
Age restrictions
These reforms aim to identify at-risk customers, ensuring their protection while betting. Similarly, online casino Ireland operate under different regulations, ensuring fair play and secure transactions, providing players with a safe and regulated gaming environment. The Gambling Act 2005 remains the cornerstone of UK casino regulation, dictating gambling activities’ licensing, regulation, and control. You can also check the casino’s website footer, where licensed operators must display their UKGC licence number. Visit the UKGC’s public register at /public-register and search for the operator by name or licence number. However, it is illegal for those casinos to offer their services to UK residents without a UKGC licence.
Condition attached to remote casino operating licences
The Local Government Association response stated that there are cases where a licensing authority would like to place further limits on machines in venues but are prevented from doing so (such as in a licensed bingo premises in an area of economic disadvantage). The Bingo Association has provided evidence to show that machines are not the main attraction for customers visiting a retail bingo club. The Gambling Act 2005 does not currently allow for pilots of new machine games that would be inconsistent with legislative provisions on stake and prize, and does not allow for any sub-divisions of Category C gaming machines (unlike Category B machines), which some of these concepts could require. While we are mindful of the potential harms of new machine products, we acknowledge that these may be substantially theoretical until evidence is obtained on their practical risks. The Commission’s advice also noted that enabling such a concept on Category C machines could potentially lead to a £10 stake gaming machine being made available in alcohol-licensed premises such as pubs, outside of the regulatory ambit of the Commission.
This should ensure that consumers, particularly those who are vulnerable, are better protected from illegal operators which are unlikely to offer the same safeguards that exist on legal sites. As outlined in the consultation which preceded the uplift, some of the increase in income has been devoted to more staff that are able to both identify the scale of the black market and take action to tackle illegal operators. The Commission will need to specify to the court the operator that it would like to disrupt, evidence that it is acting illegally and explain the requirements that it would like to be imposed on the ancillary service (for example, for a payment provider to remove their payment services). These are helpful and positive steps which should make it more difficult for people to access these types of harmful websites. Google has now removed paid-for Google Ads promoting ‘Not on GAMSTOP’ affiliate sites which pose a risk to vulnerable consumers. Similarly, operators licensed in Britain could face action by the Commission if they were found to have operated illegally in the jurisdiction of one of the Commission’s international partners.
COVID-19 had a significant impact on all land-based gambling sectors with venues required to close and then operate under restrictions for large parts of 2020 and 2021. In September 2019, the GGY generated by remote gambling overtook that of land-based gambling for the first time (excluding lotteries). We support allowing specific proposals for new machine games to be tested within planned industry pilots under certain conditions with the close involvement of the Gambling Commission, and will legislate when Parliamentary time allows.
Providing facilities without a licence is a criminal offence under section 33 of the Gambling Act 2005, and advertising unlawful gambling to Great Britain consumers is also a criminal offence. After the Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Act 2014, an operator generally needs a UKGC licence if its remote gambling facilities are used in Great Britain and the operator knows or should know that British consumers are likely to use them, even if the operator is located overseas. The UK gambling industry is in the middle of its largest tax and policy recalibration in over a decade. You are responsible for verifying your local laws before participating in online gambling. For players, it may help support the financial viability of land-based bingo venues, although it does not affect gambling rules or consumer protections.
These sectors include arcades, betting (includes online), bingo (includes online), casino (includes online), lotteries, and gaming machines. Using data on the number of machines currently in casinos and information provided in an industry call for evidence response, we estimate that this could increase the number of Category B machines in the current national casino estate from 2,800 to 5,400. Our proposals to make the regulation more consistent would provide a maximum of 80 machines, subject to a ratio of one gaming table for every five gaming machines, for 1968 casinos that meet the minimum requirements for overall gambling space and non-gambling space of a Small 2005 Act casino. Based on Betting and Gaming Council data, there are currently 137 active casino licences originating from the Gaming Act 1968 which are limited to a maximum of 20 Category B gaming machines. Its advice is that RNG (virtual) games should be made available only on gaming machines where risk can be mitigated through stake and prize limits and technical standards (on for example limit setting), especially given the increased availability of B1 machines to casinos arising from our proposals above. For example, as mentioned above, Category B1 machines are only permitted in casinos, whereas Category B3 machines are also found in betting shops, adult gaming centres and licensed bingo premises.
Firstly, it would split family groups, requiring adults who wish to play these machines to leave the group playing on non-gambling products. For example, Bacta commented that ‘cash-out’ Category D slot-style machines are substantially different from harder gambling slot machines, and are better described as fruit machines or amusement with prizes machines. These responses highlighted the low-risk nature of these machines. Concerns were also expressed that the exposure of these machines to children may normalise gambling behaviour. However, we will not mandate that these machines be moved into age-restricted areas as we do not believe that it is proportionate, considering the lower risk posed by these types of machines.
The Access to Cash review, an independent study commissioned by the body that runs the UK’s ATM network, finds that cash use could fall to just 10% of all payments by 2035. Using an estimated energy cost per machine of approximately £1,600 per year, this could result in an approximate annual energy saving of £16 million to £19 million. For two key proposals where we have not been able to quantify the impact due to limited evidence, we have made reasonable inferences instead.
The second priority is to ensure that customers receive a genuine offer of lower staking Category C and D gaming machines. As such, Option 2(a) has the added benefit of ensuring that all venues make a genuine offer of Category C and D gaming machines available to customers on device types which have genuine customer appeal. Responses stated that the commercial flexibility permitted by Option 2(b) would enable bingo operators to reduce the number of Category C and D gaming machines which they make available, while making slight increases in the number of Category B cabinet gaming machines. Both policy options are variations of Option 2, meaning that they focus on addressing the practice of operators siting increased numbers of Category B cabinet gaming machines by making lower staking Category C and D content available on in-fill and tablet gaming machines. The second objective is to ensure that customers are presented with a genuine offer of lower staking Category C and D gaming machines.
The ADR provider’s name and contact details must be listed in the casino’s terms and conditions. If the casino fails to resolve your complaint within 8 weeks, or if you are unsatisfied with their response, you can escalate the matter to the casino’s designated ADR provider. Keep records of all communications, including dates, reference numbers, and the names of agents you speak with. Contact the casino’s customer support team and formally raise your complaint. If you believe a UKGC-licensed casino has treated you unfairly, you have a clear process for seeking resolution. These requirements exist to prevent underage gambling, which is one of the UKGC’s primary objectives.
See the house edge at all popular casino games, like baccarat and roulette, which will help you to pick the game that gives you the best chances of winning. Foreign regulatory bodies that were able to prove that their licencing requirements exceeded the UK Gambling Commission’s own standards were added to a whitelist of gambling jurisdictions. Although the Gambling Act 2005 prevented foreign operators without a valid UK Gambling Commission from advertising their service to UK players, the legislation did include an important exception. Rather than wait for the government to get their collective act together, savvy bettors pointed their web browsers to reputable offshore sites in regions were gambling was already fully regulated. If you aren’t familiar with spread betting, it’s a speculative wager of the price of a stock, fund, or other security.
Most major consumer banks offer opt-in gambling blocking tools which prevent card payments to gambling firms based on their merchant category code. Similar conclusions were drawn in a separate review, looking holistically at gambling policy and the evidence base around gambling harm reduction strategies. Online operators must already provide customers with limit setting tools, so using these to better effect can be a low cost and scalable intervention to help prevent harm from occurring. Similarly to seatbelts, normalising the use of deposit limits, activity statements or other tools should leave those gambling within their chosen budget unaffected while mitigating the risk of harm in cases where people have lost track or control. Platform design has also been identified as a relevant factor and a recent audit of popular online operators found promotional offers were sometimes advertised alongside the gambling management webpage. However, a number of treatment providers, charities and individuals with personal experience of gambling harms emphasised in their evidence that there are limits to the role that measures reliant on personal responsibility can play in tackling harm for those suffering from a gambling addiction.
In smaller sports such as darts and snooker, a substantial amount of sponsorship revenue also comes from gambling operators. A parallel change in gambling operators’ approach to advertising has been the increasingly visible integration with sports. The sector will have continued to change since this estimate, and the COVID-19 pandemic caused the advertising market to shrink overall, but it is likely that the dominance of data-driven online advertising has been further cemented over recent years. Marketing online now accounts for well over half of operators’ advertising spend, with social media and paid-for online ads in particular having seen growth in recent years. Children’s exposure is lower but still significant, with 66% of the 11 to 16-year-old respondents to the 2022 Young People and Gambling Survey reporting their exposure to adverts or promotion about gambling happens offline and 63% stating they had seen advertising online or on an app. Since its implementation, gambling marketing has become highly visible and casino not on gamestop lucrative, with analysts Regulus Partners estimating that in 2017 gambling operators spent around £1.5 billion across all advertising channels in the UK — accounting for around 7% of the £22.2-billion UK advertising sector that year.
To further raise standards, a more prescriptive and risk-based model will be introduced, where remote operators are required to investigate the customer’s financial circumstances in response to certain loss triggers to understand if their gambling is likely to be harmful to them. However, while these tools are helpful for many online gamblers, they are not enough to fully mitigate the risks, so there are also a range of obligations on operators to identify and prevent gambling-related harm. All online play is account-based, and recent years have seen significant strides in the development of harm detection algorithms which monitor every aspect of a customer’s gambling to spot signs of risk and trigger interventions without human input. The proportion of people suffering harm might also be identified through other sources such as bank transaction analysis, hospital admission data, and operators’ own harm detection algorithms which flag the customers displaying indicators of harmful gambling. It also gives the Secretary of State the power to update specific provisions (such as the maximum stakes and prizes for gaming machines) and to set licence conditions via secondary legislation. A key concern for some of the land-based sectors is the ban on direct use of debit cards on gaming machines and we recognise that substantial changes are happening to how payments in society are being made.
- While we welcome these improvements, this is still far lower than other gambling venues and other age restricted products.
- They argued that the 80/20 rule can mean operators have to oversupply other types of machines in order to meet customer demand for Category B machines and that relaxing the 80/20 rule could lead to a reduction in the number of machines overall.
- By balancing the interests of consumers, operators, and regulators, the UK has established itself as a global leader in casino regulation, setting the standard for responsible and transparent gambling practices.
- Operators can only market to you if you have opted in per product (casino, bingo, sports) and per channel (SMS, email, push).
- The economic value of FECs, which rely heavily on Category D machines, was highlighted in responses to our call for evidence.
The Gambling Commission will review and consult on updating design rules for online products, building on its recent work on online slots to consider features like speed of play which can exacerbate intensity and risk. In general, this government agrees with the principle that people should be free to spend their money how they see fit, so we propose a targeted system of financial risk checks that is proportionate to the risk of harm occurring. Gambling can also contribute to tourism, for instance to seaside towns across the country, or high-end casinos attracting wealthy overseas visitors who spend across a number of other sectors while in this country. The gambling sector also contributes significantly to other industries, including sport, advertising and racing. There are also benefits to gambling which should be weighed in decision making, although they do not negate the need to prevent gambling-related harm.
The Gambling Commission collects data on the outcome of individual gaming machine sessions (e.g. whether customers have won or lost overall and their net position). Legislation was subsequently enacted to reduce the maximum permitted stake on B2 gaming machines from £100 to £2, from April 2019. Debit card payments, including contactless, have emerged as an alternative to cash in the wider retail economy, but gambling premises have largely remained cash-based. Secondary legislation (the Gaming Machine (Circumstances of Use) Regulations 2007) prohibits the use of debit cards for direct payment on gaming machines, and prohibits any use of credit cards. Members’ clubs and miners’ welfare institutes may offer up to three gaming machines if they hold a club gaming permit (CGP) or a club machine permit (CMP).
For instance, one operator found that the rates of harm detected among customers who had created their account with a sign up bonus was no different than among those who had no such offer, while another analysis found no correlation between receiving cashback bonuses and self-exclusion. Industry offered some insight based on its own data in relation to these promotions and their impact on customer behaviour. In the Gambling Commission’s online tracker survey, 65% of respondents who had seen promotional offers reported that they had an impact on their gambling behaviour, whether that was gambling for the first time or restarting after a break, the amount gambled, or the product gambled on. Submissions from people with personal experience of gambling harms elaborated on the negative effects which can come from such direct marketing and inducements. This is likely due to a combination of operators deliberately targeting more engaged customers, and engaged gamblers being on a greater number of mailing lists.
Responses from licensing authorities to the call for evidence focused more on powers than on raising the maximum fees which can be charged for premises licences. For example, Westminster City Council recently published a comprehensive policy statement that uses a range of evidence to specify those parts of its licensing area which are particularly vulnerable to gambling-related harm. As outlined above, the Gambling Act does provide licensing authorities with a wide range of powers to assess and set out the risks in their local areas as well as the ability to attach conditions to premises licences to manage these risks.
We currently estimate that the key proposals we can quantify will lead to between a 3% and 8% reduction in Gross Gambling Yield (GGY) across the gambling sector, with the main decrease being in online gambling (where we estimate a reduction of between 8% and 14% of GGY). It is likely that the proposals will come with costs to the gambling industry, both in terms of upfront delivery cost but also in reduced revenue compared to current levels. Measures in this white paper are designed to increase existing protections against gambling-related harm in a proportionate and targeted way.
Our consultation will take into account the differing association of different sectors with harm and/or their differing fixed costs. We will launch a consultation on the details of its design including proposals on the total amount to be raised by the levy and how it will be proportionately and fairly constructed. Government will introduce a statutory levy paid by operators and collected and distributed by the Gambling Commission under the direction and approval of Treasury and DCMS ministers.
By contrast, the largest estimated increase in annual GGY received from arcade operators was in the region of £10m. Cabinet device types are usually the most popular with customers. The majority of industry responses expressed a preference for either Option 1 or Option 3, and were strongly opposed to Option 2. Further details of proposed new operating licence fees will follow in due course.
