Thank You for your Support

It’s the 1st of May and while many in the UK will be enjoying a long weekend bank holiday, I’m catching-up on work for BetBlocker.

A couple of weeks ago I posted about the challenges that the smaller RET organisations face getting sufficient funding in the UK simply to stay afloat. Today, I want to do the opposite and thank the businesses that have chosen to fund BetBlocker since April 2022.

Without the support of these organisations, the BetBlocker project simply couldn’t go on. Those that have supported us with RET contributions do it both despite the fact that it creates greater workload for them and in the face of ill-informed criticism from politicians and the press. Our heartfelt thanks go out to these groups.

I should also be clear that the list below includes operators who have donated outside of the UKGC RET scheme. With no regulatory obligation to meet, these are groups that are working to deliver support to those impacted by gambling harms entirely of their own accord.

This year’s donors (April ’22-March ’23) are as follows:

- DraftKings Inc.

- LeoVegas Group

- Lottomart

- Entain

- Lottoland

- Immense Group

- Underdog

- L&L Europe

- BVGroup

- PALASINO MALTA LIMITED

Of course, I listened intently to the discussion of the new White Paper on gambling reform when it was discussed in the UK Houses of Parliament last Thursday, and there were two specific comments that stood out to me:

“I welcome today’s White Paper, but may I ask a question on the statutory levy? It is all well and good imposing a statutory levy, and I welcome that, but how that money is used is vital and has to be independent of the industry. The researchers must have free and open access to the data, and they have to be free to choose what research they undertake. Those in the gambling industry should not have any sway over what is researched and what is not.”

- Clive Efford (Labour)

“I was delighted to hear in answer to the question about the levy that the industry is not going to have its fingers in that pie. That money must be ringfenced and channelled through the NHS so that it is used properly. I see one line in the statement reads:

“work with industry and the Gambling Commission”

I urge caution, because they are part of the problem. If we are going to work with them, we have to work with people who have experienced gambling harm in the first place, in order to get a balanced view.”

- Ronnie Cowan (SNP)

When I read the above, my heart sinks. Not because the MPs in question are wrong that the gambling industry should not be allowed to decide how RET/levy funding is spent. But that, literally, goes without saying. My heart sinks because it implies that the gambling industry has had influence over how RET funding is spent. That is fundamentally untrue.

The extent that the gambling industry gets to influence how RET funding is spent is that they can choose how they distribute said funding between the organisations that the Gambling Commission has approved and added to the RET list. Each of these organization has been assessed by the regulator and determined to be an appropriate recipient of RET contributions.

At no point has the industry been allowed to pick whomever they want to send funding to. It has always been a case of choosing between the organisations that the regulator has approved.

Of course we want to see oversight, via the NHS, GambleAware and the UKGC, of what academic research is funded, to ensure that the research is academically untainted. We’ve seen too many examples of this in other sectors to ignore this potential. But when this push for oversight is preventing front-line services like Gordon Moody, Deal Me Out , Nowt Left To Lose or BetBlocker getting funding, we’re creating a significant problem.

The mentioned organization are all on the UKGC RET list. Each of them provides direct services to those impacted by gambling harms. Whether that be via treatment, education or offering tools to limit access, they each deliver crucial support. Yet the ongoing pressures being exerted to restrict gambling operators from choosing to give funding to support these organisations is strangling them.

I would call on the MPs above to reach out to these organisations directly. Ask them about what they do. And about the challenges they face getting funding. If those directing policy don’t get insight into the realities of delivering support, then the resultant system is highly likely to miss its target and leave thousands of vulnerable people without the support that it is supposed to provide.

We're not asking for the world. We're asking for a conversation.