In August, the Gambling Commission launched its financial risk checks pilot, which triggers more extensive checks for a player when their monthly deposit hits £500. This measure will be adapted in February 2025 when net deposits will be lowered to a threshold of £150 or above. These checks involve the UK’s largest operators and credit reference agencies.
Much of the criticism of affordability checks has come from the horse racing sector, which feels it’s being unfairly treated compared to other more high-risk forms of betting such as slots.
Zarb-Cousin feels that horse racing must separate itself from such verticals, with the belief it shouldn’t be included in affordability checks.
“I think horse racing needs to get as far away as possible from online casino, [which] is bringing the industry down,” Zarb-Cousin said on the Barstewards Enquiry podcast this week.
“My argument, and it has been a consistent argument, to those involved in advocating on behalf of racing is, the fact racing has not been able to extricate itself from online casino has meant it’s been caught up in these kinds of regulations.”
He calls for the sector and regulator to approach horse racing betting differently to online casino from a risk and licensing perspective.
“If racing was to delineate from the current online casino and slots operations, if it was a separate licence or a separate platform, we wouldn’t be having a situation where racing could be subject to affordability checks,” Zarb-Cousin added.
“It’d be a completely different risk profile in terms of the products.”
Zarb-Cousin critical of the GC
Affordability checks have been one of the most contentious point of the Gambling Act review and subsequent white paper. The Gambling Commission previously said the measure had dominated the responses to its white paper consultations.
Horse racing trade body the Jockey Club has estimated the introduction of affordability checks could cost the UK industry in excess of £250 million over the next five years.
Zarb-Cousin believes the Commission needs to better outline how the checks will be conducted.
“I think the problem we have at the moment is the Gambling Commission describes itself as an outcome-based regulator, it wants operators to prevent or reduce harm, but it’s not explaining how it expects operators to conduct these checks,” Zarb-Cousin explained.
“It’s not prescriptive enough and that’s a big problem because what ends up happening is you get this very sporadic implementation of this idea of affordability checks where one operator will ask for a certain amount of information while another operator will ask for different information, a different loss threshold.
“It’s cumbersome, there isn’t a very streamlined technological solution, so what we’ve seen is I think the worst of all worlds.”
Zarb-Cousin doesn’t feel the checks are being implemented correctly, believing they are asking too much of bettors.
“I don’t like the way the industry conducts them and this is why we’ve campaigned for a much more prescriptive set of rules that would govern how operators have to carry these out and the circumstances and situations in which they are expected to do so,” Zarb-Cousin said.
“We’ve seen very, very intrusive checks that have not been effective and, from my perspective, the problem is in the way the Gambling Commission regulates,” he concluded.
