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One of the most important parts of embedding a responsible gambling culture within an operators’ business is fostering an environment that ensures players can make informed decisions about their habits.
Players should be fully aware of the risks involved in gambling excessively right the way through the journey, from sign up to deposits and beyond. Yet operators face a delicate balancing act between delivering necessary RG education without introducing UX friction or condescending users.
1xBet has been exploring the role that education plays in player protection and commissioned SBC Media to place it at the heart of the fourth edition of the International Player Safety Index series.
Simon Westbury, Strategic Advisor at 1xBet said that many of the findings included “basic common sense” but explained that higher quality education helps to normalise player protection.
“We have to be aware of actually engaging with the player in terms of player protection so it becomes standardised from registration to deposit to engagement,” Westbury told SBC News.
“We have to adapt our approach; profitability is important because everyone needs to make money, but there needs to be an enshrined element of player protection in product development. Graphic designers, project managers, product delivery managers, tech developers all have to enshrine player protection.”
Do players actually understand the gambling sector?
Westbury explained that players, generally, are unaware of the ways that gambling products work. Players do not know what a slot game having a 90% RTP rate means, nor do they know what the difference between fractional and decimal odds is.
Perhaps more worryingly is that people in the industry don’t understand, either. Westbury recalled a team social earlier in his career when one of the members didn’t know how to play blackjack.
“If people in the industry don’t understand, how will the player who’s paying a pound on a Saturday before the final round of Premier League fixtures understand his accumulator of a pound to earn £40,000 is probably never going to happen,” he said.
Information regarding technical terminology must be transparently shared with players. While Westbury cautioned against over-educating to the point of inducing user apathy, he stressed that operational transparency is mandatory for robust protection.
“It’s very clear education needs to be given to the player to make an informed choice. I always use the pub fruit machine example. When I was in the pub, I’d tell my friends that the fruit machine is an 87% RTP. But that doesn’t mean if you put a pound in you’re getting 87p back. That’s not trying to take away from anyone’s enjoyment, but if a player can make an informed decision about what they’re doing, then genuinely they have a better experience.”
Combating player apathy and optimism bias
A standout metric from the IPSI report is the sheer scale of player apathy: 67% of respondents reported that players lack interest in comprehensive education.
From a consumer psychology standpoint, this is expected. Recreational users frequently exhibit optimism bias, assuming that they are low-risk and that protection tools are built for other, more vulnerable demographics.
But it is a mindset that must be shifted.
Westbury explained: “The report showed deposit limits, loss limits, self-exclusion and player breaks work. But they’re set and controlled by the player. As an operator we need to focus on how we interact to ensure that the player’s enjoyment or wellbeing is at the forefront of what they’re doing.”
Ingraining education throughout the entire process is one idea, so is creating dashboards with stats on players habits.
Crucially, though, it cannot be intrusive on the players. That only feeds the apathy.
“No one wants to go to a doctor or to the dentist, but it is good in the long run. For example, our project in Africa – 1xBalance is a tool on the website which the player can interact with and understand their type of profile as a casual customer of 1xBet. And I think we need to work on that in a non-intrusive and non-clinical way.”
It all comes back to regulation
If one thing has connected all four issues of the IPSI, it is that there is a disconnect between lawmakers, regulators and operators when it comes to player protection. With varied regulation globally, and very little consistency, operators often complain that player protection policies are hindered particularly in competitive markets.
Indeed, the report showed that 49% highlighted commercial considerations getting in the way of rolling out better education. That is despite the fact that 69% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that safer gamblers are more profitable.
It might seem an oxymoron, Westbury labelled it as “genuinely shocking”, but it highlights that more consistency is needed on a legislative and regulatory level.
“This comes back to the constant engagement that has to come with legislators before regulators. You engage with legislators by engaging with society and we don’t always as an industry cover ourselves in glory.
“We’re now coming to a point where I’d argue that regulation is becoming more about taxation and not so much focused on player protection, because we still have regulatory jurisdiction environments that do not have player protection enshrined in it.”
The antagonistic approach is putting players at a more vulnerable position, according to 1xBet’s advisor.
“We’re now in a position in the UK where we’re going to see big problems because the taxation they’re expecting isn’t going to be delivered, so the offshore market is going to grow.”
The UKGC raised eyebrows when it advertised a Head of Illegal Markets role with a salary of £65,000, with Westbury questioning whether a civil servant would actually understand the size of the task.
Ultimately, it all comes back to education and giving players the space and opportunity to understand the environment.
Westbury warned the risks of not emphasising education could be disastrous.
“If we get this wrong, they’re going to go somewhere else.”
1xBet is working on a number of projects to help contribute to this space in addition to our project in Africa 1xBalance and , placing education at the heart of its player protection strategy.
Westbury hopes that as one of the world’s largest operators, 1xBet can set an example for best practice with its large-scale operation.
He concluded: “Our global experience generally of 18 years and over 3 million monthly users, we’ve ingrained player protection as another pillar into our strategy. So it’s not just product, acquisition, and retention, building trust through sponsorship, leveraging our global experience. We’ve now actually put player protection as a separate vertical in everything that we discuss.”
Charlie Horner
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