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Gambling operators are increasingly valuing the input of people with lived experience of gambling harm to help drive safer-gambling strategies, industry experts say.

James Elliott, director of global safer gambling policy at Entain, said it is “amazing” how the thought processes of senior management change after hearing the experiences of people impacted by gambling harms.

“That then has a knock-on effect. They encourage training for everyone in the organisation,” Elliott said during a panel at the Regulating the Game conference in London on Tuesday (September 26).

“Many companies realise that responsible gambling is essential to business,” he said.

Elliott added that when Entain builds safer gambling tools, it takes lived experience advice to help design them and find ways to effectively interact with players.

The “exemplification” of this at Entain is seen in its “board diversity policy”, which sees 15 percent of the group-wide bonus being based on safer betting and gambling metrics as well as 5 percent on a customer metric, he said.

However, Elliott warned that there is “no use in the big operators having fantastic tools when smaller companies aren’t putting those controls in place, as players will just go somewhere else and experience harm.”

Paul Buck, founder and CEO of EPIC Risk Management, similarly stated that “not everyone in the industry has bought into safer gambling yet.”

“It is really important that the big boys do really well with this. There are over 3,000 licensed operators in the UK. If you only have the top five doing well with this then you still don’t have a sustainable industry,” Buck said.

Buck explained that lived experience is not just about “telling a story”, but is instead about “informing policy” by working with operators and providing an “important”, unique perspective on topics such as advertising.

Sam Douglas, the director of business services at the Hippodrome Casino, said: “We should never suppose we know someone’s story. If you’ve met one gambler, then you’ve only met one gambler. Empathy is everything. Trying to understand people’s stories is key.”

When questioned why big operators are still being fined for safer gambling failures in the UK, Ben Wright, director of ESG and sustainability for 888 Holdings, said safer gambling is “crucial to driving business”.

But “mistakes can still happen,” he said.

“Our job is to make sure we have robust systems with risk controls and audits. 

“No one wants to work for a company that affects people negatively. Our job is to have a continuous improvement culture to make sure mistakes don’t happen,” Wright said.