Responsible betting: Changing terminology, and casinos doing more than posting signs

Saturday, February 1, 2025 11:51 AM
Photo:  Shutterstock
  • Buck Wargo, CDC Gaming

Las Vegas-based experts have outlined the emerging topics on responsible gaming in 2025, including the changing terminology around the subject and what the industry should be doing instead.

Alan Feldman, director of strategic initiatives at the UNLV International Gaming Institute, Kasra Ghaharian, director of research at the UNLV International Gaming Institute, and Shane Kraus, a professor at the UNLV Department of Psychology, broached the subject at a recent gaming conference.

Feldman said that the industry should speak to people broadly, rather than addressing those who have a disorder affecting their lives, so that gambling stays in an appropriate context.

“The idea of responsible gambling has come under more scrutiny in the last two years than at any other time,” Feldman said. “There’s a call in other parts of the world for responsible gambling to be done away with. We should no longer call it responsible gambling. There’s some rationale to that; the language we’ve been using has proven completely ineffective. You rarely find more than 5% of customers who access responsible gambling tools. That hardly suggests this has been successful.”

Feldman said the reason why only 5% are interested in using the tools is that the industry, the advocacy community, legislators, and regulators have done a poor job of explaining what responsible gambling means. That has resulted in people being stigmatized, because they feel it’s focused only on them. People are stigmatized because it suggests they’re being irresponsible, when the entire notion of a gambling disorder is that people don’t have control over what they’re doing.

Feldman suggested changes in the language around consumer protection, in order to create unanimity in how responsible gambling is discussed and what people are trying to get across.

Responsible gambling and problem gambling are different from each other and have been conflated, Feldman said. In Nevada, the responsible-gaming program at the vast majority of casino operators is a brochure with an 800 number to help someone. Casinos signage indicates that help is available and employees are trained to look for warning signs.

“Absolutely none of that has to do with responsible gambling,” Feldman said. “That is your response to someone who has a problem when it’s really important. I’m not suggesting we abandon that part of what we do. I’m talking about trying to get focused on how we keep our players healthy. That’s an area where the industry can do a much better job and it’s in their interest to do it.”

The way to do so is to reframe responsible gambling, Feldman said. Gambling has to be affordable. People should have balance in their lives rather than it be about gambling. Players need an understanding of what they’re getting into, with information about the difficulty of success.

“We need ways to help people control their own activity and that’s where we start to see limit setting as a practical expression of that. We should always focus on the fact that this is about having fun and I would argue that we get a little too focused on winning as the only objective,” Feldman said.

“Gambling involves a risk and I don’t think we’ll ever make it harm free. But we can try to reduce any harm. We can reduce harm for people who are just getting engaged in gambling and try to set better behaviors early on in the experience.”

When it comes to self-exclusion programs, casinos don’t and won’t employ facial recognition to identify those gamblers, Feldman said. Instead, people need to be better educated on gambling responsibly, encouraged not to subscribe to the gambler’s fallacy that they can predict outcomes.

“The overwhelming majority of people who gamble have no ability to predict outcomes. They just think they do. We can do a better job of pointing that out,” Feldman said. “Risk underlies the very product we’re all selling, but we never talk about it,” Feldman said. “When you buy stocks, you’re told it involves risk and you may lose money. It’s as if risk doesn’t exist in the discussion. Instead of 1-800-Gambler at the bottom of all the ads, maybe it should say something as simple as, “Gambling involves risk and a possible loss of money.”

Nevada is ahead of the curve in terms of responsible advertising, but there’s a problem with social media. Some influencers film themselves playing slot machines and say they’re winning, when they’re actually spliced clips together to make it look like they are. Feldman called it “false advertising.”

In addition, parents should be informed how to talk to their kids about gambling. They’re the ones teaching them how to play and encouraging risk.

More focus should also be put on peers, who follow people’s behaviors throughout their life. The designated- driver concept for gambling among friends needs to be encouraged by the casino industry.

“Two friends need to define limits before going to gamble,” Feldman said. “It’s sort of understood about drinking that if you see your friend get too inebriated, you’re probably going to step in because you’re the designated driver that night. We haven’t found a way to encourage that yet in gambling.”

Nationally, the U.S. is finally having a discussion about gambling and mental health and making it easier to get help. Continuing to encourage that is important, Feldman said.

“With all due respect, the majority of the industry in the United States is pushing an 800 number. Instead, gamblers need to be more informed about their bets, and banning parlays isn’t the answer, as some jurisdictions have done. People need to be educated about odds and probability. That would be a great math class in middle school.”

Globally, the discussion is ongoing and terms like “safer gambling” and “player safety” are beginning to take hold. Europe hosts a Safer Gambling Week.

“These are creeping into more of the discussion around what we’re currently calling responsible gambling.”

UNLV’s Kasra Ghaharian said artificial intelligence has both benefits for and risks to society. It poses ethical dilemmas to the gambling sector, which can use AI to reduce problem gambling. “These risks and benefits can be balanced.”

Companies can self-regulate with review boards and develop principles around AI. Caesars Entertainment, he said, has gone that route.

The second option is industry standards drawn up by associations. State governments can also play a role through regulation and legislation.

“We’re seeing more legislation, like the EU AI Act, and proposals in states as well,” Ghaharian said. “I know one in California ceased, but there’s momentum in other states.”

With the spread of legal sports wagering nationwide since 2018, UNLV’s Shane Kraus has been studying problematic behavior. The data indicate that those who wager on sports are more likely to be men, have higher incomes, reside in states where it’s legal, and curiously are more religious.

Those who gamble on sports compared to those who don’t are at a higher risk for problem behaviors. “The catch is, the more sports you love to bet on, the higher your risk for problem gambling. It increases drastically,” Kraus said.

The other big takeaway is gamblers’ relationship with alcohol and cannabis; they also have other behavioral problems compared to non-sports bettors.

“The people who engage in sports betting regularly are using more substances. Recently, we published a paper about sports bettors binge drinking compared to non-sports bettors,” Kraus said. “The relationship with alcohol is a pretty robust risk factor.”

In their study, Kraus found that those after two years, many sports bettors decrease their activity, because they get bored. But problems for those who like to drink and gambler “are very significant. We need to be thinking about sports betting in the context of addiction.”