After drugs, alcohol and tobacco/vaping, it’s time to return to another vice.
“Gambling” – in the context of this post – covers higher-end, high-stakes stuff (bookmakers, casinos, online gambling) rather than the National Lottery (which has been looked at/will be looked at again separately).
Current gambling law in Great Britain (England, Scotland, Wales) is set out in the Gambling Act 2005 – which came into force in 2007.
Most types of gambling were legalised in 1960. However, before the 2005 Act, gambling laws were old-fashioned and fractured, with the industry attracting organised crime. Efforts to crack down on that were successful. Following the introduction of the National Lottery in 1993, technological changes – such as online gambling and fixed-odds betting machines – meant the law required updating and consolidation.
The 2005 Act handed local authorities responsibility for issuing premises licenses to gambling businesses. It also allowed gambling businesses to advertise on TV. Before 2007, gambling advertising was restricted to lotteries, football pools and bingo.
The Act also opened the door to the creation of Las Vegas-style “supercasinos”; one being mooted for Cardiff Bay. Those plans were quickly dropped and no “supercasino” has ever opened. Large regional casinos do exist, albeit on a much smaller scale.
The Gambling Commission
The Gambling Act established the Gambling Commission, a Great Britain-wide (England, Wales, Scotland) statutory body. It’s tasked with regulating the gambling industry to ensure games are fair, ensure criminal elements are locked out and also to prevent exploitation of children and vulnerable adults.
The Commission is responsible for issuing personal licences to leading individuals involved in gambling businesses (as mentioned, premises licences are a matter for local councils).
The Gambling Commission is also responsible for collecting and publishing statistics and research relating to the gambling industry.
According to their latest annual report6, the Gambling Commission raised £26.2million (mainly from licence fees) and spent £40.4million, resulting in a (somewhat ironic) deficit of over £14million.
Gambling in Northern Ireland (which is devolved) is regulated directly by the Northern Irish government’s Department for Communities, which issues a code of practice to gambling businesses.
Who counts as a “problem gambler”? What are the impacts?
Problem gamblers are identified using the Problem Gambler Severity Index (PGSI)7. People are given a score based on how they answer questions concerning their gambling behaviour.
These questions cover the frequency of gambling, the amount spent/lost, health problems associated with gambling behaviour and financial stress that their gambling behaviour causes.
Anyone with a score of 8 or more (the equivalent of answering “almost always” to 3 out of 9 questions) is deemed a high-risk problem gambler, while those scoring between 3-7 are deemed at moderate risk.
As noted, 3% of people who took part in the latest National Survey of Wales were identified as being either a moderate or high-risk gambler. Various estimates have put the number of problem gamblers in Wales at anything between 18,000 and 30,000.
Pressure to rollback gambling liberalisation
While the Gambling Act 2005 was a rare act of liberalism by the Blair administration, it has undoubtedly had unintended consequences.
Two of the most commonly cited issues with the Act are the deregulation of gambling advertising and online gambling. These went largely hand-in-hand with each other, fuelling a lot of the explosive growth in the industry since the Act became law.
There has been on-off talk of an outright ban on gambling advertising, but this has never materialised.
Some sports have always had a very close relationship with betting – notably horse racing. However, if you’ve watched any football (or most sports for that matter) over the last decade or more, you’ll know that many top football clubs (and some competitions) are now sponsored by gambling companies. The English Premier League is set to voluntarily phase out front-of-shirt gambling sponsorship from the 2026-27 season.
There have also been growing concerns about forms of gambling that target younger people – such as “pay-to-win” and “lootboxes” that feature in online multiplayer games. There have been no proposals yet to extend the Gambling Act 2005 to cover lootboxes (and equivalents), with the preference of the previous UK Government to work with the gaming industry.
One of the few concrete measures taken to date is the (previously mentioned) £2 cap on stakes on fixed-odds betting machines. The previous Conservative UK Government also introduced several very case-specific measures in 20238, which are being phased in gradually during 2024-25.
Some of the key measures include:
- “Light-touch” financial vulnerability checks, where gambling companies will be punished if they fail to take a customer’s financial situation into account.
- Cutting the “speed and intensity” of online and mobile casino games.
- Age verification checks for in-person gambling customers who look 25 or younger (similar to schemes for alcohol).
6. Gambling Commission (17th October 2024). “Annual report and accounts 2023 to 2024”. Available at: https://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk/report/annual-report-and-accounts-2023-to-2024
7. Gambling Commission, “Problem gambling screens”. Available at: https://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk/statistics-and-research/publication/problem-gambling-screens
8. UK Government (27th April 2023). “Major reform of gambling laws to protect vulnerable users in smartphone era”. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/major-reform-of-gambling-laws-to-protect-vulnerable-users-in-smartphone-era
