Online gambling has accounted for a rising majority of customer complaints lodged against Britain's gambling industry, according to an analysis of a decade's worth of complaints acquired via FOI from the UK Gambling Commission.
In 2017, more than 7 out of ten complaints among all gambling operators were in the “remote casino, betting and bingo” sector, which includes online casino card games, slots, bingo and sports betting. Last year was the highest year on record with companies logging more than 100,000 complaints for the first time.
More than 1 out of 5 British people surveyed last year said they had gambled or placed a bet online at least once in the last four weeks, according to the UK Gambling Commission survey on gambling participation. This marks an increase of more than double from 2012. The Commission estimates the online gambling sector accounted for more than 34 percent of the industry’s £13.8 billion revenue in between April 2016 and March 2017.
Since 2007 the Commission has regulated the British gambling industry, but it was only in November 2014 after the passage of the Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Bill they started regulating non-British based gambling companies doing business in the UK.
The majority of online gambling companies operating in Britain are based overseas in countries like Malta, Ireland and autonomous territories like Gibraltar, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands. These regions offer more lenient regulations, lower taxes and have allowed the companies to avoid filing regulatory returns with the Commission for seven years.
Remote operators under the Commission‘s administration more than doubled once these companies were included. This was followed by a more than tenfold spike in complaints between 2014 and 2015.
The Commission has net an average of 10 more remote operators per year since 2015.
“In simple terms, more operators means more reports of consumer complaints,” said a spokesperson from the Commission.
But it is not just the number of complaints and operators going up: the data reveals the average number of complaints per operator has increased by more than 30 percent over the last two years.
“Growing complaint numbers in a sector can either be a sign of increased dissatisfaction or can indicate that complaints processes are more visible and easier for the consumer to access,” the spokesperson said.
The Commission states its mission is “to keep crime out of gambling, to ensure that gambling is conducted fairly and openly, and to protect children and vulnerable people." Yet the Commission’s FOI office refused to provide the number of complaints by company, even though this data could identify bad actors to the public.
The FOI office said the requested data on specific companies was “commercially sensitive information” under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, arguing that providing the data “could discourage licensees from freely providing information", “lead to comparisons being made between operators” and “would put [operators] at a disadvantage to other operators.”
The Commission spokesperson said they use data from company regulatory returns, which is the source of these complaints, “to monitor compliance with various requirements, ensure that processes are working correctly, to inform policy development and to understand how the gambling industry is working more widely.”
“We may take action depending on our findings,” the spokesperson added, “for example, as a result of analysing the complaints data we’ve received from operators in the regulatory returns we are proposing to change wording of the regulatory returns so the data is more accurate.”
Data from regulatory returns is not the only way to gauge issues people are having with gambling companies. The European Directive on Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR), which came into effect in 2015, requires companies that fail to resolve a complaint to point the customer to a third-party ADR provider to handle the case.
The Commission’s March 2017 Complaints Processes in the Gambling Industry report, published one year into the ADR dispute scheme, found ADR provider Independent Betting Adjudication Service (IBAS) handled 93.6 percent of disputes in the gambling industry.
In 2015 and 2016, more than half of IBAS cases ruled in favor of the consumer or were conceded by the operator as an admission of goodwill, fault or offer of compromise, according to the most recent data published by IBAS.
IBAS secured more than £1.2 million for consumers among the 9,595 disputes it handled in those same years. That means someone who received a favorable outcome won an average of £200 pounds each.
IBAS managing director Richard Hayler said the majority of disputes came from online gambling companies.
“2015 was the first year that online disputes outweighed land-based disputes and it’s stayed that way since,” Hayler said.
The data from IBAS is also a window into the issues customers face when filing complaints. The number one issue was promotional and bonus offers, which claimed more than 1 out of 5 disputes. These are offers which promise gamblers more bets or money if they spend a certain amount within a limited time period.
Though recent reports from the Gambling Commission show Britain still prefers non-remote forms of gambling, the popularity of digital gambling continues to grow. This is reflected in the gambling industry’s earnings. Between 2014 and 2016, the industry’s overall remote gambling revenue increased by 216.87 percent while complaints rose by 1674.65 percent.
The increase in user complaints has been in parallel with an increase of nearly £18 million in fines issued by the UK Gambling Commission since 2016. The fines are centered around the same issues ADR providers deal with: deceptive advertising and social responsibility.
Click on a region to see the results for that particular area. The data is from the Gambling Commission's National Health Survey report on Gambling
Mark Griffiths, director of the International Gaming Research Unit at Nottingham University, said that data collected by gambling companies contains the necessary information to flag at risk users, but that potential problem gamblers are still exposed to the same advertisement experience as other users.
“... the direct promoting of marketing and advertising materials to players who companies pretty much know are problem gamblers, to me that’s just ethically irresponsible,” Griffiths said.
In its statement, the Commission said that “growing complaints numbers in a sector can either be a sign of increased dissatisfaction ...” This viewpoint has seemingly driven recent actions taken by the Gambling Commission to address issues in the industry.
In November 2017, the Gambling Commission released a new strategy aimed to “help shape a well-regulated gambling market that works for consumers.” In addition, to avoid any future database discrepancies, a new report has been introduced that expands on how to report complaints properly.
“There should be protective infrastructures in place so that companies can maximise fun for those who have no problems and minimise harm for those that have potential problems,” Griffiths said.