At Tuesday’s panel discussion at SBC Lisbon, Gambling For the Greater Good: Measuring Social Impact in Responsible Gaming Strategies, responsible gambling experts from North American and European markets discussed how gambling companies are committing to the greater good in the present and how they can increase this in the future.
The panel’s moderator was Shelley White, the CEO of the Responsible Gambling Council, which supports operators with responsible gambling strategies through the RG Check Accreditation Program and collaborates with academics and regulators to advance responsible gambling standards. White retire in December.
White opened the discussion by asking the panelists what social good meant to them.
Duncan Garvie, Founder and Managing Trustee of charity BetBlocker, said, “social good is about outcomes,” explaining that it’s not about operators making token gestures to appease the public. BetBlocker is a charity that offers free, anonymous blocking software to help people manage gambling habits, and has partnered with many betting companies, including DraftKings.
One of the major topics of discussion was why many people inside and outside the industry aren’t aware of the positive work companies are putting toward social good causes. Garvie used an example of an operator that paid for BetBlocker’s services to be translated into Romanian but didn’t want its contributions to be made public.
“Many parts of the sector, regulators and the public, see operators contributing to social good as whitewashing,” he said. He even mentioned cases where companies declined to make public contributions to BetBlocker for the sake of the responsible gambling charity’s image. Therefore, many operators are committed to contributing to social good but don’t make this public.
Adam Warrington, Vice President of Responsible Gaming at Underdog Sports, agreed and said gambling operators needed to support “social causes [that] are relevant to what you do” to avoid a perception of whitewashing.
White pointed out efforts in other industries that face similar scrutiny, such as oil and pharmaceuticals, which have found alternative innovative avenues for social good, such as supporting careers in STEM and tackling women’s health issues, which are relevant issues for those industries.
When discussing whether there was a role regulators and governments could play in supporting social good causes, Garvie said, “we all have to play a role.” Linking back to his charity BetBlocker, he also explained, “it does make it easier for charities when there is a regulatory mandated system” to donate to charities.
Warrington cited recent legislative activity in the United States, the GRIT Act, which was proposed to Congress this year. The GRIT Act proposes committing 50 percent of the excise tax collected on operators to responsible gambling education and research. His company, Underdog, which operates daily fantasy sports and online sports betting across the United States, is the only gambling operator to come out in public support of the GRIT Act. He described supporting it as “a no-brainer. We need more education, we absolutely need more research, we need more North American research.”
Warrington also spoke about Underdog’s responsible gambling research fund, GuardDog, which launched in 2023 and has funded two startups.
When the conversation moved to the future of social good and responsible gambling, Shelley envisioned returning to an SBC Summit in five years with “stats and case studies” about instances of gambling operators and regulators committing to social good causes.
Garvie hoped that attitudes to responsible gambling measures like deposit limits and other tools would shift, suggesting that “consumers view responsible gambling as what you do if you have a problem,” which is the wrong attitude. Above all else, he wanted people to take away from the panel that “we need to get better at cooperation.”
