One of the country’s leading sport’s publications and the United Kingdom Gambling Commission are having something of a public spat. The Racing Post’s Tom Kerr wrote a piece in July of this year that accused the UKGC of ‘waging a war on punters’, suggesting that we had to fight back now whilst we still can. The Gambling Commission responded with an open letter, saying that the publication was ‘imbalanced’ and that it failed to offer them a right of reply. The independent regulator therefore wrote an open letter of its own, looking to ‘clear up misunderstandings’.
Rather than let things lie, the Racing Post then published a long piece replying the to the UKGC’s reply. It has become something of an undignified battle between two bodies that really should know better, not least of all because it is playing out in front of bettors that probably don’t want to know quite so much about how the sausage is made. For a lot of people, the entire thing might well have passed them by, leaving many wondering what on earth is going on and why this has been happening at all. Any confusion would be entirely justified, so we’ll look at it more closely here.
The Racing Post’s Initial Complaint
Back in July of 2023, the Racing Post published an article, written by Tom Kerr, that seemed to attack the Gambling Commission. The piece was centred around the nature of the affordability checks that have been proposed in the white paper on gambling reform. Kerr feels that the affordability checks are not only needless, but somewhat offensive in nature. When the UKGC published their proposals for the affordability checks, it became clear to Kerr that the promised ‘frictionless’ nature of them was not true, going on to suggest that they ‘reveal a lack of betting knowledge.’
Kerr also suggested that the affordability checks offered a sense of ‘contempt for those who choose to bet.’ He pointed to three ‘deeply objectionable’ elements of the proposals, the first of which is that the affordability checks will be carried out if someone spends £1,000 in 24 hours or £2,000 in 90 days. The so-called ‘enhanced financial risk assessments’ will be carried out every six months. This is because financial circumstances change, meaning that periodical checks will be carried out regularly so as to ensure that a bettor hasn’t fallen on hard times in the intervening months.
Kerr points to the likes of a car dealer getting in touch six months after you’ve bought your car on credit, checking to see that you could still afford to pay the car. He also wonders who it is that this is likely to protect, given the fact that there is likely to be only a minuscule amount of people who were financially sound when checked but have failed to ruin six months later. As if this wasn’t intrusive enough, claims Kerr, but the UKGC also proposed ignoring winnings if they were achieved less than a week ago. In other words, net loss checks will not look further back than seven days ago for winnings that might mitigate your approach.
Think about that. Imagine that you’ve won £10,000 on an accumulator bet and two weeks later decide to invest £1,000 of it on a new bet, but you loose. Even though you’re still £9,000 up, the Gambling Commission would ignore that and look to check your finances on account of the fact that you’ve ‘lost’ £1,000. The UKGC’s document on the matter declares that ‘a big win a number of years ago may well not have any bearing on risk now.’ That is obviously entirely fair, but surely a big win two weeks ago will have a bearing on your approach to betting in the short-term?
In order to ensure the ‘frictionless’ nature of the affordability checks, the Gambling Commission is suggesting that betting operators can turn to credit reference agencies to check ‘income and expenditure data, such as current account turnover.’ This existing data set is provided by banks to credit reference agencies and tells them about the incomings and outgoings from your bank. It is used by the likes of credit lenders in order to assess your suitability to borrow. For those that have a regular income, this will be easy enough, but those, such as the self-employed, that don’t have one might struggle.
The fact that the proposals are just that at this stage meant that Kerr called on punters to offer their own opinions on the matter to the public consultation. He framed it as being a fight against the loss of ‘reasonable privacy and freedom’ and even suggests that the ‘future of betting as we know it’ is at stake. Having pointed out that such checks would make it difficult for exchanges to operate, given their reliance on ‘high turnover market makers,’ Kerr has painted a picture of an approach from the UKGC that might put the likes of horse racing at serious risk of survival.
What The UKGC Said In Response
In something of an unusual circumstance, the Gambling Commission responded to the piece by Kerr with an open letter of its own. It began by saying that the Racing Post had spent months putting forward ‘imbalanced stories’ over the ‘ongoing financial risk consultation.’ The organisation said that the Racing Post hadn’t offered it a right of reply. As a result, it felt that the only fair thing to do was to publish its letter that aimed to ‘clear up misunderstandings’ around the proposed checks. This was, it said, because the Racing Post had ‘refused to publish the letter.’
The letter was penned by Andrew Rhodes, the Chief Executive Officer of the Gambling Commission. The first thing that the letter did was to acknowledge the ‘concerns’ about the proposals form some consumers, especially around the potential privacy issues. Yet Rhodes also said that it was important to clear up any misunderstandings so that readers that wanted to engage with the consultation could do so in ‘an informed way.’ It is estimated, he said, that only around 3% of accounts would have to undergo any sort of financial assessments at all.
Regarding the fact that people wouldn’t experience a ‘frictionless’ assessment, he said that the UKGC expects only a tenth of that 3% to find it anything other than frictionless. In other words, only about 0.3% of punters would ever be asked to provide extra details to providers, with 99.7% of bettors not likely to be asked for anything. If the 0.3% of punters were unwilling to give added details when requested, Rhodes said, they could use the consultation to offer suggestions of how else their financial risk could be assessed. It definitely felt like a snidy comment in the letter.
In 90% of instances, Rhodes says, the financial risk assessments will be carried out via credit reference agencies as well as open-source banking, meaning that there will be no threat to anyone’s privacy. Gambling companies will not be given access to a bettor’s full bank account information in such instances, with any information only used to assess possible harm as opposed to identifying regular winners and restricting their betting habits. He also points out that these checks will only apply to people betting online, as opposed to in betting shops or at race tracks.
That isn’t to say that high street shops won’t carry out affordability checks of their own, of course. They still have under anti-money laundering and social responsibility obligations, meaning that they might see some checks as necessary. Yet it is only for online punters, with the credit checks being soft ones that will not damage your credit score. The financial sector will not be given information about your gambling behaviour, for example. Similarly, Rhodes points to other misunderstandings that the Gambling Commission has looked to address on its website.
He points to the information from the Health Survey for England from 2018, which suggests that the number of people betting online that are experiencing a problem with gambling stands at 3.7%, whilst another 5.2% are at moderate risk of suffering gambling harm. One of the ways that the government’s white paper proposes this could be dealt with is via financial risk checks, inconveniencing the smallest possible number of people. In fact, Rhodes says that the checks would not be implemented unless it would be guaranteed that they would be frictionless.
With four weeks remaining of the consultation period at the time the UKGC’s open letter was published, Rhodes said that they were welcoming all responses. The hope was that the organisation would be able to ‘strike the right balance’ between looking to protect the freedom of each individual to gamble as they see fit and the desire to protect ‘those most vulnerable from gambling related harm.’ Looking after vulnerable people has long been one of the aims of the Gambling Commission, which Rhodes believes the affordability checks would look to do.
The Racing Post Shot Back
Rather than leave things there, the Racing Post was quick to issue a reply to the Gambling Commission’s open letter.
Tom Kerr was back, admitting that the publication had refused to publish the letter, but justifying the decision to do so.
Kerr pointed to his own thread on Twitter, which said that the regulator was approached for its comment on relative stories ‘routinely.’ The UKGC was told, he said, that the Racing Post was ‘unwilling to publish a letter if it misrepresented disagreements over our coverage as errors of fact.’ It all felt a little bit messy at that point.
We told the Gambling Commission we welcomed a letter about its proposals, just as we routinely approach it for comment on relevant stories. However, we told the GC we were unwilling to publish a letter if it misrepresented disagreements over our coverage as errors of fact. (1/3) https://t.co/DcUu4iu9St
— Tom Kerr (@ThomasKerrRP) September 19, 2023
The open letter, Kerr said, ‘simply repeats contentious assertions from the white paper’ and failed to engage ‘with the numerous concerns raised by Racing Post readers and contributors.’ It was felt that the Gambling Commission was trying to get its opinions published as facts, essentially dismissing the concerns raised as ‘effectively groundless.’ The publication chose to print the open letter in full, but Kerr said that they couldn’t do so ‘unchallenged.’ He said that the first issue was that the affordability checks weren’t a ‘theoretical proposal’ as suggested, but real and already happening.
More than 9,000 people reportedly replied to the Racing Post’s own Big Punting Survey, with one in six people saying that they’d already been subjected to affordability checks. Hundreds of readers then got in touch to let the publication know that they had been impacted by affordability checks, saying that they had been ‘driven away from their hobby as a result.’ There was, Kerr wrote, ‘no balance among our readers’ but instead a ‘pervasive deep fury about the situation.’ It made, he suggests, the idea that only 3% of people will be affected seem extremely unlikely.
Kerr’s language on the matter is often incendiary, saying that the consultation is ‘about the shape of the next in a series of attacks on their freedom to bet.’ Kerr is of the belief that the 3% figure was reached by looking at all accounts active at ‘any point’ over a year, meaning that the real number of regular bettors that will be impacted is diluted. He also asks whether anything can truly be ‘frictionless’ if people are having to hand over the likes of bank statements and payslips to the companies that they’re looking to place bets with, as well as reiterating the fact that it won’t be frictionless for the self-employed and others.
One of Kerr’s biggest issues with the UKGC’s open letter is that fact that Rhodes repeatedly talks of concerns being misplaced but fails to explain why. Rhodes and the Gambling Commission have, he said, had plenty of time to explain the details behind the mechanics of how the government’s promise not to impact people too much will be met. In fact, when the Racing Post published a piece explaining the concerns of Michael Dugher, the Chief Executive of the Betting and Gaming Council around frictionless betting, the UKGC’s verbatim response was as follows:
“This is what we have to say: everything we have to say about frictionless checks is set out in the consultation.”
In other words, when presented with the chance to add clarity about how frictionless bets would work, the Gambling Commission failed to do so. That was, Kerr said, ‘facts, not misunderstandings.’ Kerr said that Andrew Rhodes had a ‘standing offer’ to have an in-depth interview with him in order to address the various issues directly to Racing Post readers. By failing to do so, the implication is that Rhodes is instead hiding behind meaningless phrases such as ‘misunderstandings,’ whilst punters were already suffering from the damage of affordability checks.
Is This The Right Way To Go About Things?
The most obvious question that people will ask themselves is whether this is really the right way to go about things. The Gambling Commission is an independent regulator, so having such a public spat with one of the leading sports publication in the country doesn’t feel like it. The Racing Post, of course, is a newspaper that is focussed predominantly on horse racing, so there is little question that there will be interested parties in the industry trying to drive their approach to this situation. The reality is that affordability checks will mean less money gambled, which will mean less money for racing as a whole.
Whilst publications such as the Racing Post can say whatever they want whenever they want to without much recourse, as evidenced by the existence of the like of the Daily Mail, whether it should be so publicly taking on the main regulator for the gambling industry is a matter of some debate. They might be making good points and feel as though they’re representing their readers, but doing it like this doesn’t feel right. It feels awkward to be effectively stuck in the middle of these two organisations when all most gamblers want is the ability to place bets regularly and without issue.
In many ways, it feels like this is a plague on both their houses.