The Gambling Act whitepaper is now out. After many years in the making, the paper is the culmination of a Review undertaken by the UK government, to go over the Gambling Act of 2005. Many things have changed since 2005, not least the state of online gambling activities. To effectively review the 2005 Act, the current state of technology plays a big part. The whitepaper points to various reforms, but misses others, which has perplexed the GB Gambling Commission’s Executive Director for Research and Policy, Tim Miller. This, of course, affects all UKGC-certified operators like the popular Gate 777 Casino.
The Gambling Act whitepaper
The Gambling Act whitepaper, released in April 2023, provides a roadmap of sorts for the UK government, and in particular, the UK Gambling Commission, to follow in terms of online gambling and the challenges it poses in regulation. While the paper itself is a long read, it gets highly specific in some areas of suggested gambling reforms, broader in other areas, and skips some legislative areas entirely.
Tim Miller, along with a slew of other industry heads, believe we should be wary of the state of gambling not covered by the whitepaper. In Tim’s letter to the public, published on the 3rd of May, he details what the Gambling Commission are already addressing through their work efforts.
What is the Gambling Commission working on?
Tim’s letter takes in the entirety of what the Commission is doing with regard to the whitepaper being published. This includes the fact that the Gambling Commission now has over 60 work areas to address to implement the suggestions of the paper. Although he speaks to being able to move quickly in some areas, for other areas covered he can see that it will stretch out for several years.
There are goals in the whitepaper that the Gambling Commission must fulfill by making changes to the guidelines for gambling operators. These guidelines are currently detailed in the License Conditions and Codes of Practice documents. These documents also require legal eyes over any proposed changes – a process that takes a significant amount of time. The first proposed changes by the Gambling Commission are due this summer.
The process of changing rules and regulations is fraught with bureaucratic red tape, as Tim is rightfully aware of. He also paints a picture of a significant workload for the Commission: the Whitepaper stipulates that the Gambling Commission should take the lead on gambling reform and oversight.
Is the Commission afraid of hard work?
It might seem, to some, like the Gambling Commission might be afraid of hard work; that the Gambling Act Whitepaper was too detailed, and that the Commission’s role in undertaking its contents was too momentous. The Whitepaper does outline that the roles and powers of the UKGC will extend and grow should there be significant change arising from the implementation of the whitepaper.
However, hiding from hard work? This isn’t the case. All Miller is saying is that working through all the suggestions and stipulations from the Whitepaper will take the Commission a significant amount of time, years even.
He goes on to say that because of the workload, it will mean that there will be little, if any, wiggle room in human resourcing to dedicate to any other activities that the Gambling Commission may typically focus on.
In our opinion, it sounds like a call to the government to provide more funding to the Commission to ensure that operations run smoothly, as the Whitepaper suggests, and that there is still time and budget for other important projects to go ahead.
Other whitepaper detractors
Time Miller isn’t the only person who has made comments on the Whitepaper’s release. There are criticisms of the Whitepaper on both sides of the fence. Experts and campaigners have been warning that the impending timelines for industry overhaul will see, with major repercussions on individuals who are grappling with gambling addiction. After multiple delays to the publication of the Whitepaper, critics are wary that the roll-out of new anti-gambling harm measures will also take much longer than expected – mirroring the words of Miller.
Industry groups for the gambling sector, on the other hand, have argued that the Whitepaper has failed to cover the complexity of new internet gambling technologies and that their suggestions had gone completely unnoticed. Bally’s, a US gaming house, noted that the Whitepaper also failed to touch on any suggestion of emerging technologies. This is worrying, given that the Whitepaper itself is already a number of years late in delivery, during which time we’ve seen significant advances in tech such as generative AI and Web3 explode into the online consumer market.
