Is Personalisation the Key to Increased Safer Gambling?

In its annual Sustainability Report 2022/23, the European Gaming and Betting Association (EGBA) revealed that its members had shown a marked increase in personalised safer gambling messaging.

Maarten Haijer, Secretary General, EGBA, said:

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“We’re delighted that our members continue to make positive progress in their efforts to promote safer gambling. This is all part of their commitment to put a sustainable approach to gambling at the heart of what they do.”

The EGBA is also deeply involved in the drive to create a standardised set of risk analysis metrics.

Vasiliki Panousi EU Affairs Manager at EGBA added:

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“Safer gambling is a priority for EGBA and its members. But it must be a shared objective across the sector, and that’s why we are extremely pleased that, in early 2023, we received broad support to our request for CEN, the official EU standardisation body, to develop a European standard on markers of online gambling harm.”

She noted that if all goes according to plan, they hope to have the final CEN standards published in the Official Journal of the EU by the end of 2024!

Knock Until Someone Opens

The report showed that they had bolstered their overall safer gambling outreach to 45.5 million messages across the participating online casinos. Of these, the most effective has been found to be those which relate specifically to the player's gameplay, hours in the casino, losses, and deposit choices.

The report showed that the volume of impactful personalise messages had increased from 40% of total outbound contacts to 48%. Given the total number of messages sent, this 20% increase means that nearly 22 million personalised safer gambling campaigns were triggered across the UK and EU!

The Sustainability Report showed that this increase in personalisation was bearing fruit, as 51% of players who received an intervention based on these outbound campaigns were able to reduce their financial losses in three months or less.

 Helping Others Help Themselves

The community needs to be educated and empowered to reduce gambling harm successfully. To achieve this goal, the EGBA and its members have focused on providing players with safer gambling tools and educating them on how to use them effectively.

The 2022/23 industry report showed that the number of online gamblers who used these safety tools proactively had increased to 30% of users. In total, 18.4 million players, 60% of the total customer base, used the tools at some point, whether in response to a run of poor RNG or at the advice of a support agent.

The list of available tools includes self-exclusion options, deposit limiters, the blocking of certain games, and timers for the number of hours in the casino, which encourages regular breaks. Based on Haijer’s feedback, the most popular tool to date has been the loss limiter which is an excellent starting point for a healthier online gambling community.

Research Mitigates Risk

With the number of online gamblers increasing by as much as 5% year-on-year, the EGBA is committed to following the data and staying ahead of the curve when it comes to player safety.

To this end, they increased their annual European contributions to problem gambling research, education, and treatment (RET) by 109% in the last year. This phenomenal support of safer gambling research saw eligible programs receive nearly €50 million in grants and financial support.

During the same period, the organisation donated a further €127 million to a number of deserving European charities and community projects.