Building a sustainable gambling industry: is it possible?
What would a sustainable gambling industry look like?
For some, it might come as a shock that this question even needs to be asked. Isn’t a sustainable gambling industry just one that keeps people entertained, makes lots of money, and provides jobs along the way?
Well, not exactly. Like it or not, regulation is a fact of life. And like any other industry, gambling needs to find a place where its long-term future is assured from a regulatory perspective. It needs to find a ‘steady state’ in which the regulatory environment is stable and well-understood.
It was Michael Dugher, Chief Executive of the Betting and Gaming Council, who suggested that gambling should be treated the same as alcohol rather than tobacco. The former is generally tolerated as a net-positive (albeit in a gradually evolving regulatory environment) and is thus sustainable. The latter is not long for this world, and is not.
But here’s the thing: to be treated like alcohol, isn’t it time we acted like alcohol? That industry took the ‘alcopops scare’ seriously. They engaged with criticism, took onboard suggestions for change, and proactively avoided the worst. And albeit for a variety of reasons, alcopops are not coming back. Nor is there any serious attempt on behalf of larger drinks businesses to cynically target the youth market. Indeed nowadays, you are almost more likely to see adverts for alcohol-free beer than the real thing.
So what should gambling be looking to do in order to make that happen? Here’s a four-point plan.
- See which way the wind is blowing
The lesson of the alcopops story is very simple: take action before someone takes action for you. You would think that the gambling industry would have learned this lesson after the FOBT legislation of 2018 reduced maximum stakes from £100 to £2. A figure somewhere in the middle was possible - if the industry had taken a moment to engage seriously wit