How affiliates can embrace the forthcoming Safer Gambling Week

“It’s easy to lose track of time” is the slogan of Safer Gambling Week this year, even more pertinent in a year when a lot more people have had a lot more time to gamble. But marketers need to understand that for some problem gamblers it’s boredom that drives them to play for longer periods.  It’s not so much losing track of time as recognising the effects that kind of undivided attention has on the mindset.

As someone who has gambled extensively on casino games and slots for long periods, often as a result of having time to fill, I came to realise that without some sort of ‘strategy’ in place before I started, it is easy to come away with regrets. This is where the industry could do more to educate players before they end up in a spiral of chasing losses. There are many reasons that a problem gambler, alcoholic or drug user end up in that position and a lot of those problems are caused by a lack of fulfilment in everyday life.

In my opinion, slogans like ‘When The Fun Stops, Stop’ or ‘It’s easy to lose track of time when gambling’ are most effective in waking our side of the industry up to our social responsibilities rather than to actually stop gamblers from becoming problem gamblers. A phrase or slogan is not going to fill the void in people’s lives, stop people from seeking an adrenaline rush or stop a problem gambler in their tracks.

A problem gambler is by definition not someone who can apply a level of control. It’s a mindset and gambling, alcohol or drugs are not “causes”, they are facilitators.  While the gambling, alcohol and medical industries rightly have to accept a level of responsibility, moderating the use of their products, providing a safe environment and educating players seems to be the sensible route.

I grew up with fruit machines and by current standards, I would have been classed as a problem gambler. When I started gambling online in 2004, I recognised those traits still existed within me so I tried different strategies to exercise control. Setting a loss budget or a target and walking away didn’t work for me. Self-excluding (pre-Gamstop) and setting deposit limits didn’t work either: I ended up playing at some very grey operations. The reason for that was that when the sessions should have ended, I didn’t feel fulfilled.

Mental reset

What did work for me was learning to walk away for five or 10 minutes in the middle of a session to do a ‘mental reset’. If I was losing, I’d tell myself in that break that that session was done, accept the loss and start again rather than try to recoup those losses with silly bets. If I was winning, I’d go back and bank my original deposit and 50% of the profit and play the rest for fun, sometimes winning more, sometimes not. But for me, the biggest issue was always time: I never really watched much TV so I had a lot of it in the evenings! So, I also found a ‘hobby’ and I continued to gamble regularly but mostly in a sensible fashion. That’s not to say I didn’t lose more than I wanted to but it never caused issues in the day to day.

I’m also a firm believer that an addict has to WANT to give up and simply putting up barriers to stop them from doing what they are addicted to is way more dangerous to them than giving them a safe, controlled way of managing their addiction. Education plays a role and providing alternatives to the addiction is also effective but there is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ so that is a harder task.

One effective thing that operators could consider is to use their army of affiliates to write about the triggers for gambling addiction and the strategies that players could deploy to control their urges. I’m not talking about the tick-box boiler plate content we see now on most sites about recognising the signs and seeking help… these should come from ‘real world’ problem gamblers that have been or are being treated through the various treatment programmes.

Ian Sims is the founder of Rightlander, a state-of-the-art affiliate compliance platform that allows affiliates and operators to identify potentially non-compliant content in regulated jurisdictions. Prior to establishing Rightlander, Sims was an egaming affiliate for 13 years.