Steve Donoughue, a gambling consultant from Great Britain, provided his opinion on new gambling regulations in the country and COVID-19 influence on the industry.
How do gambling businesses deal with the pandemic in the United Kingdom? Has anything significantly changed during the lockdown?
The land-based industry has closed with most staff on furlough. Those online operators that have been operating as just sportsbooks are really suffering, while those with casinos and poker are thriving. There wasn’t a massive increase in gambling that the government and regulator were wringing their hands over.
As it has been recently revealed, the Gambling Commission has introduced new measures to eliminate the risks of problem gambling during the quarantine. The regulator has even promised to suspend licenses if there is a necessity. Will they have a considerable influence on operators?
The real issue here is that the regulator has imposed these regulations without consulting the industry which is in breach of s.24 (10) of the Gambling Act 2005. So, we have the regulator illegally imposing restrictions on online gambling without legally obliged consultation or any evidence that the restrictions put in place will have the desired effect. What we are seeing is the regulator ever more working outside its remit and in breach of the law and the Regulator’s Code.
In your opinion, will the Commission continue to tighten regulations in the country? Why?
I think the evidence suggests that the regulator hates gambling! It has been captured by the anti-gambling lobby and it will continue to use every opportunity to beat up the industry and increase regulations. It has set itself the task of reducing problem gambling numbers, and it is laudable, except it thinks the only way to do this is to reduce the number of people gambling.
What is your overall prediction about the gambling industry in the UK? What challenges will it face in the nearest future?
My prediction is that the current COVID-19 restrictions will become permanent. Over the following years, more and more restrictions will be put in place based on nothing more than the ideological dogma of some prohibitionist academic with little knowledge or experience of the industry. We have gone down the rabbit hole and long gone are the days when evidence-based policymaking was the norm. Now the regulator feels that its success is measured by column inches in tabloid newspapers. What the industry needs to do is to copy Sweden and remind the regulator that by making it commercially impossible to operate in a licensed environment, operators will be forced into the black market where there is no protection for customers and no tax money for the government.
What industry sector will survive and remain profitable under new conditions?
The new restrictions do not directly impact revenue. They just increase costs for the operators having to impose them. This makes them less profitable and hastens the departure of many financially weakened operators. It is just one more blow to an already beaten up industry that, I think, will eventually die. The future for the UK is a handful of large operators trying to compete against a thriving black market.
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