7 minute read
Safer Gambling
© Chris O’Donovan Photography/Samaritans
Samaritans publish practical guidance to reduce the risk of gamblingrelated suicide. By Damien Connelly and Peter White
onversations that are courageous.
CChallenging. Difficult. Uncomfortable. Stigma-breaking. Painful. Heart-breaking. Life changing… This is not an easy topic to either write or talk about and probably not easy to read either. As noted in Samaritans’ research, “Breaking the stigma around suicide and gamblingrelated harms is crucial for any prevention strategy to be successful.” If, by publishing this, we at Casino Life and Outsource Digital Media help break this stigma, we’ve supported our industry in making progress.
“…people experiencing gambling-related harms were five times more likely to have suicidal thoughts than other customers. One in twenty (5%) had attempted suicide,” noted this Samaritans report. Suicide is a fact of our industry that is global; it is not specific or exclusive to any one county or jurisdiction. It behooves us as mature and intelligent individuals and organisations to accept and manage this reality to the absolute best of our abilities. Gambling and gamblingrelated harm are risk factors for suicide. We at Casino Life and Outsource Digital Media fully support raising awareness of the guidelines created by Samaritans in the hope we encourage as many gambling businesses as possible to review and consider enforcing Samaritans’ guidance.
In addition to the people with lived experiences who shared their stories and knowledge, the following operators and organisations supported this body of work: Bet365; Kindred; Playtech; Rank Group; GamCare; UK Gambling Commission – project funder; GambleAware; BetKnowMore UK; Epic Risk Management; and PGSolutions Group.
Kindred has started to communicate publicly about its ‘Journey Towards Zero’ – such public communication will also hopefully help break the stigma surrounding this topic. Kindred has an ambition to reach zero percent revenue from harmful gambling by 2023. Harmful gambling sources accounted for 3.9 percent of Kindred’s revenue in 1Q21, according to the company.
Land-based operators have decades/years of legacy
© Chris O’Donovan Photography/Samaritans
Mubeen Bhutta
processes, face-to-face exposure and intervention experiences, and continuous staff training in place. Based on our industry experience, it is fair to say that online has further to go than land-based in successfully implementing responsible gambling practices that truly place customers at the heart of their corporate and employee actions, rather than shareholders and financial gain. The fact that large numbers of land-based operators have been closed in many jurisdictions for long periods of time since the Coronavirus pandemic started, but calls and digital communications to gambling-related harm support organisations have not stopped (in fact, they’ve probably increased), reinforces the need for online gambling businesses to deal more urgently with this uncomfortable topic.
Recommendations from this research include how to have a robust suicide prevention policy to safeguard customers and staff, how to use harm prevention to guide marketing communications, how to use data to help prevent suicide, and how to communicate sensitively with customers in distress. If you stop and think about the following statement published in these guidelines, you will realise how important it is to address this issue effectively:
“For every customer directly experiencing gamblingrelated harms, at least six other people will be negatively affected.”
“Suicide is preventable… With a clear association between gambling and suicide, identifying the changes needed in the gambling environment to prevent suicide is a vital part of our work,” noted Mubeen Bhutta, Head of Policy at Samaritans. “We’re proud to publish these industry guidelines and look forward to seeing all gambling businesses engage with them in a proactive effort to do more to prevent gambling-related suicide.” Samaritans’ industry guidelines are uniquely focused on suicide prevention and have been created with the view of sitting alongside existing industry resources that aim to reduce the risk of gamblingrelated harms. Examples of such resources include GamCare’s Safer Gambling Standard and its suite of industry-facing training products. Companies can find out more about suicide awareness and prevention training developed by GamCare and Samaritans at: https://www.safergamblingstandard. org.uk/training-and-resources, and by emailing: industryservices@gamcare.org.
About Samaritans
Anyone can contact Samaritans FREE any time from any phone on 116 123 (in the UK), even a mobile without credit. This number won’t show up on your phone bill. Or you can email jo@samaritans.org or visit www.samaritans.org.
Every day, Samaritans volunteers respond to around 10,000 calls for help.
Samaritans is a charity and it’s the public’s kind donations and more than 20,000 volunteers that mean we are always there for anyone struggling to cope. Find out how you can support us or volunteer with us.
To find out more about Samaritans’ work in gambling-related harms and suicide, please visit their policy and research page.
www.samaritans.org
www.facebook.com/samaritanscharity
NFT technology shows how to win new fans in gaming
ew technology N is always a driving force for innovations in gaming and there are opportunities for casino floors to turn things around again. Non Fungible Tokens (NFTs) are the blockchain-backing cryptographic assets on the internet. They are creating the biggest buzz among the younger generation and in the fintech industry right now, with the onset of the global pandemic as consumers spend more time on online platforms looking for entertainment. Even the oncefamous electronic gaming giant Atari has announced that it is selling its own NFT collection.
NFTs are seen mainly as crypto-collectibles on blockchain, and can be transferred easily and used across different games. However, even NFT assets (in-app avatars and accessories purchase) is clearly the leading revenue to help drive in-game economies from new gamers in eSport and casual games. It is not happening on the casino floors because of a disconnection between the game makers and the casino operators. Raymond Chan Casinos are not having the ability to make games on their the casino floor. The new system will directly bridge own desire, thus limiting the interaction with players casinos and customers for increasing incentives to directly on the casino floor. play on the casino floors, and for a longer time than
A new standard of blockchain powered “smart” they do in eSport and modern casual games these gaming machines network can help the situation on days.
Image Credit: https://cryptoart.io/data
The estimated total value of the NFT-based crypto art has now passed $100 million according to cryptoart.io/data
In principle, it makes a lot of sense and there are several clear advantages to the idea. Firstly, casinos can offer unique NFT digital accessories on blockchain to players that aren’t available for direct sales. This is likely to be highly useful when it comes to, for example, authorizing one game to react to the digital avatars, creating compulsion and additional in-game boosts to enhance the gaming experience for a new generation of customers.
Secondly, players will be better equipped with more control while playing, allowing in-game strategy and potentially position themselves with higher chances of winning (in selected jurisdictions). These features will engage players for longer time-on-device and drive up revenue from the casino floors.
Thirdly, as the blockchain infrastructure becomes mature and widely used, the system offers the potential of greatly improving the overall security of the environment. The new layer will also create access for the regulators to promote responsible gambling and AML, for game designers to tap into new sources of information of their players, for casino operators to expand their reach to customers via CRM, for technology companies to innovate in presently unimaginable ways, and for gaming values to grow exponentially.
Every new ecosystem starts with a chicken-and-theegg problem: The supply won’t join the system unless there’s a demand. And demand is challenging to prove without real supply. As the gamers’ data are encrypted and anonymous on the blockchain with NFTs, casinos are more willing to open the customer gateway with game makers for product improvement. Both casino operators and game makers are now able to offer NFT digital assets for gamers to acquire, making them stay longer on their games and increasing revenue for both game makers and casino operators.
We believe casino gaming, and more broadly the casino entertainment value, should be appreciated like all other entertainment modes in the internet age today — interactively, securely, globally and responsibly. The unique characteristics of NFT on a blockchain network present new business opportunities for the industry to compete with upstarts and win new fans alike.
