The UK Gambling Commission’s Ben Haden has outlined two projects that will help the commission analyse how they can make better use of operating data to “close the gaps in the knowledge” about gambling and those who gamble in Great Britain.
Speaking in a blog post, the UKGC’s Director of Research and Statistics highlighted how conversations with over 120 stakeholders in March earlier this year, as well as the Evidence Gaps and Priorities 2023 to 2026 publication in May and the government’s white paper itself, have helped identify how operating data can create improvements.
To tackle this, Haden has outlined two upcoming projects by the commission over the next six months involving regulatory returns and daily aggregated consumer data.
As part of an operator’s information submission to the UKGC for their licence, the Director noted that the regulatory returns dataset can be sharpened to “remove a significant number of items which are out of date or not useful”.
He also stated that the frequency of reporting should be adjusted “from annual to quarterly and align reporting dates” to become “more timely in appreciating changes in the market and managing our income”.
Haden added that changes to regulatory returns are something the UKGC is looking to implement as soon as possible, but they will consult on the frequency point in November.
In regards to daily aggregated consumer data, this will be a pilot by the commission to receive “a more detailed dataset from operators” to see transactions totalled over each day, but not each transaction.
The Director commented that such data will help the UKGC “understand the impact of policy changes, in particular as a result of the Gambling Act review”, to provide the commission with early impact indications and where different directions may need to be taken.
Haden also stated that this could mean fewer “ad-hoc requests from operators in relation to each change”, before adding that triangulating the pilot with other surveys and datasets will provide a “much more informed perspective overall”.
Operators have been invited to take part in the pilot as well, and if it is successful in terms of the value it brings, it will be pushed out more widely.
Haden concluded: “These two projects are just the start of looking to extract more value from operator data, as well as other datasets but it’s an exciting part of our drive to use the best evidence we can in our work. And better evidence driven by better data, will lead to better regulation.”
Last month, the UKGC’s Executive Director Tim Miller highlighted the topics that will be covered in the next batch of consultations for the UK gambling white paper – socially responsible incentives and gambling management tools.
