UK Gambling Act Reforms - Affordability Checks Are Coming. What Do You Actually Think?

[TaffyTipster]

Going to say something that might not be popular.

I hate this.

The proposal is that operators have to run checks on you if you lose more than £125 in a month. Soft credit checks. Financial data. Proof of income at higher thresholds.

I'm a 43-year-old electrician. I earn decent money. What I spend on rugby betting is my business, not Ladbrokes' business, and definitely not the government's business.

I've got lads at work who spend more than I do on golf. Nobody's asking them to prove they can afford their green fees.

I understand there are people with serious problems. I'm not dismissing that. But the answer to problem gambling is not treating every working man who puts twenty quid on the Six Nations like a financial risk to be managed.

Where's the line between protecting people and deciding grown adults can't be trusted with their own money.

 

[oli_sussex]

Spent years at the exchange watching the full range of gambling behavior.

The affordability check argument is not about the recreational bettor losing twenty pounds on the Six Nations.

It's about the person losing their mortgage without the operator registering any concern. The operator has complete visibility of net losses. They choose not to act on it because acting on it reduces revenue.

The checks exist because operators have demonstrated they will not self-regulate on this. Fifteen years of voluntary codes. The problem didn't shrink.

That said: the thresholds as proposed are badly calibrated. £125 net loss in a month is not a harm threshold. It's an administrative one. There's a difference.

The principle is correct. The implementation is poor.

 

[FadeThePublic]

American perspective here so no skin in the game directly.

But I'll say this: the operators lobbied against these checks for years and now they're lobbying to make them "frictionless" and voluntary where possible.

That tells you everything about what the checks would actually do.

If affordability checks genuinely had no impact on recreational bettors the operators wouldn't care about them.

They care about them because they will reduce volume and they know exactly whose volume they'll reduce.

The people they're most worried about losing are not the £20 Six Nations bettors.