Online Gambling

Lord Smith of Hindhead Excerpts

Thursday 23rd November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Smith of Hindhead (Con)]

My Lords, I wish to keep my comments fairly brief and concentrate on the gap in regulation concerning online advertising and general activities of tipsters and affiliates, and affiliates masquerading as tipsters.

This is a topic on which I have previously spoken in the House, in my noble friend Lord Chadlington’s debate on advertising in connection with online gambling. The reason I feel it is important to raise this topic again here today is that, in many cases, the activities of tipsters and affiliates could easily undermine the aims of the multi-operator self-exclusion scheme about to be introduced.

It has been widely reported that some online gambling companies are investing proportions of their advertising spend specifically in paying tipsters and affiliates, who to all intents and purposes are totally unregulated, rather than spending their advertising budgets on traditional regulated advertising such as on sidebars of websites, on television and radio or in the press.

The problem with this stems from the intrusive and calculated way in which tipsters and affiliates work. For those who may not know, tipsters and affiliates are people behind social media profiles who prolifically post gambling tips. They use whatever attention-grabbing methods they wish to get people to place the bets that they “advise”, using methods which traditional advertisers would certainly be reprimanded for, and then continue to hound their customers, encouraging them to sign up to betting accounts and to place bets, then more bets and more bets, and so the frenzied cycle continues. One report estimated that it is not uncommon for a person to put on an average of 35 bets before a win is realised.

Tipsters and affiliates send out a constant stream of links to betting companies, free bets and offers, together with relentless messages of encouragement and so-called tips which are totally unsubstantiated, making money from signing-on fees for each person a tipster or affiliate manages to convince to sign up to a betting account. They then make money from a percentage of the revenue made by the said betting company for the life of each account. This means that a tipster or affiliate makes his or her money from bets on which a punter has lost while also being the person telling that same punter which bets to make. As they operate on social media, everyone is exposed to them. There is no watershed here and no age limit beyond which they cannot reach. Poignantly, there is no self-exclusion rule by which they must abide.

The blanket multi-operator self-exclusion measure is a sensible move by the gambling industry and could, in theory, help a lot of people who are having problems if it is properly enforced. Making a system where it is easy and quick to turn off the tap has to be a good idea, rather than having a situation where a person has to go back and revisit all the places that he or she may be finding the hardest to resist to shut down activities one by one. I hope it works, and I hope we do not continue to hear reports of companies targeting people again who have excluded themselves.

However, tipsters and affiliates undermine this earnest scheme, since they are not bound by the blanket self-exclusion policy, or by indeed any policy. There lies the problem. Many online gambling companies know that their affiliates cross those lines of responsibility or, at the very best, come close to them. Indeed, two months ago, Sky Bet entirely shut down its affiliate programme, stating that,

“the regulatory landscape in which the industry operates is developing and maturing and operators are experiencing increased obligations regarding their regulatory responsibilities and level of compliance. In order to continue to operate in a compliant manner, we feel that operating the Programme is no longer viable and that managing the output of affiliates presents a significant risk to our business from a regulatory perspective”.

Sky Bet should be commended for this, but the operations of tipsters and affiliates should at least be subject to some investigation. Could the Minister undertake to look into this within his department?

Everyone who knows me knows that I am a supporter of gambling. I like to have the occasional flutter, but I am a supporter only of responsible gambling and a responsible gambling industry. Therefore, I really hope that grey areas such as the one I have mentioned can be bridged so that a person facing problems who really wants to stop gambling when it is harming his or her well-being or lifestyle can do so swiftly and has the ongoing help and support they need.

Behind every problem gambler statistic is a man or woman, and often a family, with real problems. We should help them as much as we can and not stand by when outside influencers, motivated by their commercial and financial aims, threaten to disrupt or destroy the progress of an individual who is struggling to get their life straight. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Browne, for initiating this debate today.