Regulation and affordability: what does the future look like?

In the past decade the landscape around responsible gambling and affordability - in the UK at least - has changed utterly.

Certainly, in the first 15 years or so of online gambling, the phrase ‘gold rush’ wouldn’t be out of place. A plethora of operators, some established high-street names, some new internet brands, fought for new customers, revenue and margin. “Responsible gambling” was an afterthought and serious regulatory pressure in that area was somewhere close to nil.

I know - I was there.

Today things are different. The UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) expects a series of checks to take place, including Know Your Customer (KYC) checks at registration and more formal affordability checks when deposits pass a certain threshold in a month. These enhanced due diligence checks can take a variety of forms, discussed elsewhere on this site, but the headline is simple enough: UKGC expects to see clear evidence that meaningful affordability checks have been performed before accepting stakes over a certain limit.

If you are audited, and this cannot be demonstrated, fines and worse are in your future.

So much for today. What about the future? At ClearStake, we have no crystal ball. But the 3-year UKGC strategy published in April probably tells us something about the way things are going.

To legislate or not?

I suspect many in the gambling industry still wake up in cold sweat when they recall the kite flying exercise of February 2021, in w