The UK gambling commission is calling on bookmaking firms to assist with a research study on whether some gambling products and environments are more harmful than others.
The research is being done with the UK Responsible Gambling Strategy Board, and commissioned by GambleAware.
The commission said it wants consumer gambling activity information to be used in the project and gambling operators will be asked to provide the data. The data will be used to understand how gambling products, environments and characteristics differ from each other and which are more associated with problem gambling.
The project hopes to request data from operators that can potentially be re-used, where relevant, for further research projects, the commission said in a press release. The responsible gambling board has published a research brief outlining the project. Gambling operators will be contacted by the commission to explain how they can get involved at an early stage, the release said.
“Our strategy sets out our commitment to preventing harm to consumers from the risks gambling can pose,” Ben Haden, program director at the Gambling Commission said in the release. “Success of this relies on growing our evidence base to better understand the types of gambling products and services that present more of a risk of harm to consumers than others.
“Gambling firms have an important role to play in achieving this as they hold comprehensive data that is vital to this research,” he said. “It goes beyond simply analyzing the data which is already reported to us by operators and we will be encouraging the industry to get involved.”
Officials from GambleAware—a problem gambling watchdog group—also praised the project.
“GambleAware is pleased to be working with the Gambling Commission and the Responsible Gambling Strategy Board on a project that will help us to better understand gambling behavior across different products and to know what characteristics are most strongly associated with harm—focusing on the online sector in the first phase and moving onto other sectors in subsequent phases,” said Claire Wyllie, director of research commissioning at GambleAware. “For the first time, we will be able to look comprehensively across the gambling industry to understand where the risk of harm lies and by making data available to researchers, industry can gain new insights to prevent harm and to ensure customers gamble safely.”
