On Tuesday the UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) published a report entitled Gambling participation in 2017: behaviour, awareness and attitudes. As one might expect considering the year the gaming industry has just put behind it, this annual report made for a sober reading experience.
Headline findings included the following key statistics: 45% of people gambled in the past month, of which almost a third only played the national lottery. 18% had gambled online during that same time period, and 1% had played on bookie machines. 51% of the online gamblers had used a mobile phone to play.
The stats related to problem gambling, and the perception of gambling on the whole, were where things started to get stark. While only 0.8% of respondents were identified as” problem gamblers”, a further 3.9% (over 4 times as many) identified as “low or moderate risk gamblers” (meaning at risk of becoming problem gamblers). Only 33% of people think that gambling is fair and can be trusted, a figure which came down 1% from last year, and 41% think gambling is associated with crime, up 2% from last year.
Less than a quarter – 22% – of gamblers said they read terms and conditions, and of those almost a third (27%) said terms were at times unfair. 80% of people felt there were too many gambling opportunities around these days, and 71% that gambling was dangerous for family life.
Let’s home in a little on the perception of gambling in the UK. The UKGC found that the top criterion for choosing an operator to play through was the operator’s ‘possession of a … reputation for being fair and trustworthy.’ They also found that the top policy of concern to the public was protecting children from gambling. Obviously, both of these issues are of huge significance for an industry beset by serious image problems. The second and third most popular reasons cited for choosing an operator were ‘best odds being offered’ and ‘best bonus offers.’
It is a really significant sign of the times that an operator’s reputation for fairness comes in well above both of these more traditional considerations.
The crimes people most associated with being linked to gambling included, in order, theft (20%), fraud (17%), drug dealing / prostitution (16%) and money laundering (16%).
Interestingly, a full 25% of respondents felt that it would be better if gambling were banned entirely, which clearly indicates a deeply felt antipathy towards gambling as it’s currently being conducted in the UK. It seems fair, then, to conclude that, if the gaming sector wants to avoid greater shake ups, it had better up its game this year.
