The Social Gaming Association will be helping the Gambling Commission collate data on social gaming to inform its future policy on the industry, the trade association has announced.
The data will help the Commission build further intelligence on the sector, building on the report into the known and understood risks of gambling-style social games on Facebook it commissioned back in January.
The chairman of the association, former Sportingbet gaming counsel Stuart Tilly, said his organisation supported the “balanced and considered approach” being taken by the Commission, and its “pro-active attempts to engage with the industry throughout.”
He added that the Association, whose members include operators such as Slingo, gambling regulator the Alderney Gambling Control Commission and B2B supplier Enteraction, would embrace the opportunity to provide “detailed and targeted data” to help the Commission in addressing any consumer protection concerns raised in its report.
Despite a series of Daily Mail-led press reports last year that suggested the British gambling regulator was looking at extending its remit to include gambling-themed social games on Facebook, Commission chairman Philip Graf admitted in January that his organisation had “absolutely no desire to widen our regulatory scope” to include social gaming but would continue to monitor its potential risks.
Graf also advised providers of social games on Facebook that “have gambling characteristics” that “it is in their interests to self-regulate if they want their business model to be sustainable.”
He however admitted they continued to monitor the games for any elements that exposed young people to develop problem gambling characteristics or consumers to being “ripped off…by unscrupulous or incompetent operators”.
Announcing the review in January, the Commission revealed it had already requested input from the Responsible Gambling Strategy Board, and was talking to other national regulators already looking at the issue, such as Australia, which published preliminary findings as part of its May 2012 report into the Interactive Gambling Act.
Graf’s non-interventionist views on social gambling contrast with those of William Hill chief Ralph Topping, who has argued that platforms such as Facebook should be subject to the same controls as real-money gambling.
The Gambling Commission has not yet set a release date for its report on the review.
Article written by Stephen Carter
