GPWA Times Magazine - Issue 58 - February 2024

guing that a player with, let’s say, 10 betting accounts could theoretically lose up to £10,000 in a day. And while their math is correct, that kind of reasoning is naive. By that logic, a player with 100 accounts could lose £100,000 in a day. But how would they feel if this player goes and just takes cash out of an ATM to go gamble? Or if they try an offshore website to gamble because they don’t like affordability checks? Or what if they even just go through a bookie in their neighborhood? What then? “An argument against stronger checks and lower thresholds, is that players will shift towards the illegal market,” Britton said. “But it’s worth noting that evidence supporting this displacement is far from clear, and if the checks are as unintrusive as planned, then the incentive to shift to the illegal market is much reduced.” Ah, yes, because nothing says “unintrusive” like scrutinizing every detail of a person’s financial situation. So, here’s to the ongoing saga of checks and balances that none of us asked for, and yet, here they are, disrupting the industry like an unwelcome guest who just won’t take the hint to leave. And for that, we’ll slap the hind of GamCare to the APCW Wall of Shame. Welcome to the club! For this edition of the APCW Wall of Shame, we’re hitting on a hot-button topic that we just can’t seem to get away from. The stupidity of the proposed U.K. affordability checks. In fairness, the reason why we can’t shake this nagging news item is because it poses the biggest threat to the biggest market in our industry. So, of course, this merits our undivided attention. Players hate affordability checks. Operators fear them. Betting shops don’t want to perform them. And for us affiliates, they’re simply bad for business. Still, the U.K. Gambling Commission continues to push them forward. Then, late last year, the folks at GamCare, the independent U.K. charity that supports and raises awareness to those affected by gambling harm, decided to toss their own ignorance into the conversation, saying that affordability checks are not strict enough. “We are advocating for stronger checks when accounts are opened to proactively address potential financial hardship for vulnerable players,” said GamCare Board of Trustee member Jill Britton in a blog post titled, “Financial Risk Checks – A Closer Look.” In particular, GamCare wants the 24-hour loss threshold to be lowered from £1,000 to something much, much lower, arWALL OF SHAME “Players hate affordability checks. Operators fear them. Betting shops don’t want to perform them. And for us affiliates, they’re simply bad for business.” Illustration by musicman / Shutterstock GPWAtimes.org 68

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