How big data is being cynically exploited by the gambling industry to target vulnerable people

The Campaign for Fairer Gambling writes in advance of an expected Government response to the consultation on FOBT stake levels expected after May's local elections.



When the Gambling Commission published their advice to the government in response to the gambling review, it fell short of recommending a stake reduction to £2 on Fixed Odds Betting Terminals (FOBTs), instead emphasising the need for “tracked play.” It argued that: “Making tracked play mandatory across Category B1, B2 and B3 machines… would increase the availability of information about play, giving… operators no excuse if they fail to identify players that are starting to show signs of problematic gambling.”

“B2 machines” relates to FOBTs in betting shops, permitting stakes of £100 a spin, compared to £5 on casino B1s and £2 on B3s. The level of harm associated with FOBTs far outstrips that of other machines, with 230,000 sessions experiencing losses of £1000 or more in a single year. The unusually large staking capacity also facilitates more addictive casino content, such as roulette.

According to Health Survey data, 43% of FOBT users are either problem or at risk gamblers, suggesting the vast majority of losses are contributed by those experiencing harm. This is the inherent contradiction in the Gambling Commission’s approach: FOBTs are inextricably linked to gambling related harm, so reducing it would be irreconcilable with operators’ commercial interests. This is why the bookies are lobbying against a reduction to £2 a spin, as they know that this would be the most effective mechanism for reducing or preventing the harm on which their excessive FOBT profits are reliant, as those who aren’t experiencing harm tend to gamble at lower stakes anyway.

The government is due to respond to the gambling review after the local elections, so it is imperative that the responsibility for reducing harm is not left to the bookmakers, whose use of “big data” was recently revealed by a Daily Mail investigation to be of only malicious intent.

Undercover at an industry conference, it heard from Optimove, a London and Tel Aviv based ‘customer retention company’ that provides services to 240 gaming firms including GVC – the operator that runs Ladbrokes Coral, Sportingbet and Bwin.

Motti Colman, a former William Hill employee, said: ‘For big losers... what we need to do for them is inspire some kind of positive experience. If their balance is at zero ... we are able to target them maybe at that point at which their final loss has occurred [with] some kind of cash-back. Bookies see the perfect punter as one who has a mix of wins and losses but continue to bet, indicating they will carry on regardless of how well they do.” In other words, bookies see their “perfect punter” as an addict.

Jesper Karrbrink of online gambling firm Mr Green said: “We need to dig deep down in the data trying to find relevance,” envisaging a time when players would think: “Mr Green knows what my favourite bets are, when I bet, how I bet. We are not using that. We have so many opportunities to become super-relevant.”

The investigation corroborates earlier work by The Guardian, which found the gambling industry to be using third-party companies to harvest people’s data, helping bookmakers and online casinos target people on low incomes and those who have stopped gambling.

“Third-party data providers allowed us to target their email lists with precision,” revealed a digital marketer who counted betting companies among his clients before leaving his agency last year. “Lower-income users were among the most successfully targeted segments.”

So the Gambling Commission’s trust in operators to use customer data for social responsibility purposes is naïve at best, and given they only last week fined SkyBet £1m for failing to uphold self-exclusion – amounting to the bare minimum of stopping people who have banned themselves because of addiction – the government will surely have more sense than to rely on this approach.

Particularly given the mounting political pressure from MSPs in Scotland, MPs in Westminster and other sectors. A CEBR report has revealed that the cost of FOBTs to the taxpayer is £210m, due to the consequent impact on public services.

The bookies have failed to reduce harm on their own. Anything short of a reduction to £2 a spin won’t be going far enough.