KPMG Malta environmental, social, and governance (ESG) lead Rachel Decelis is urging gambling firms to take sustainability seriously.
Speaking on the opening panel session at the ICE Consumer Protection Zone on Tuesday, Decelis argued that ESG and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) were becoming a greater focus of all gambling and igaming stakeholders.
Acknowledging fellow panellist SG:certified sustainability director Laura Da Silva’s assertion that investors take a keen interest in sustainability, Decelis said: “These days, it’s not just investors that are looking at sustainability. It’s your customers. And there’s research to show that even gaming customers are these days looking at who to gamble with based on their ESG credentials.”
She said the ESG credentials of businesses were also increasingly taken into account by employees, banks, supply- chain partners, and regulators.
“Banks are themselves under pressure to report on ESG, so they will come to you asking for your ESG metrics. Your supply chains and partners, these are all very important stakeholders”, she said, as well as pointing to the interest regulators will be taking, due to initiatives such as the European Union’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive.
“These will impact gaming companies, either directly or indirectly, and gaming companies have a choice now. We want to stay ahead of the curve”, she said.
Decelis also pointed to KPMG research which shows that strong sustainability and diversity positively correlate with financial performance, a trend that the panel suggested would increase as climate change and other socio-economic pressures intensify the onus on the sustainability of businesses.
She warned operators not to overlook the environment-sustainability angle in ESG. “This will only continue to get worse”, she said. “And this is relevant to the gaming sector, because the gaming sector might not release carbon emissions directly. But it does create a demand for carbon through its data centers and through business travel.”
Betsson Group head of sustainability Jonna Danlund supported Decelis’s argument, saying she had seen the trends described within the operator.
“We get quite a lot of questions in the recruitment process. So already when we’re vetted and people have started looking at Betsson: Are we the top employer that we want to be? We get questions about what we do within sustainability. Are we at the forefront? And I think that’s just so important, because, you know, no employees, no business”, she said.
Danlund went on to explain that good ESG practices and reporting are partly increasing the lifetime value of gambling customers. “We want players to play with us their whole lives. We want them to play in a nice healthy way. We want them to spend money with us instead of going to the movies for example. The only way to do that is to support them and to help them play in a way that that’s healthier on a good level for them. It’s good business.”
