Steve Hoare

UK gambling nets full cooperation for Safer Gambling Week

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Safer Gambling Week 2025 (#SGWeek2025) takes place this week (17-23 November), with all UK gambling stakeholders expressing their full commitment to promoting safer play and responsible gambling.

Entering its ninth consecutive year, the initiative is co-led and coordinated by the Betting and Gaming Council (BGC), amusement trade body BACTA, the Bingo Association – and all other memberships associated with UK Gambling.

Last year’s edition highlighted that over 1.5 million unique accounts used a safer gambling tool during the week, which was a 22% YoY increase. The number of people who set deposit limits went up by 14%.

Furthermore, more than 60 million impressions on online safer gambling messages were generated across the biggest social media platforms – X, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram. It is safe to say that the organisers will aim to break these records in 2025 in the week running from 17 to 23 November.

Baroness Twycross, UK’s Minister for Gambling, said: “As a Government, we are fully committed to reducing harmful gambling and protecting those at risk. That is why we have introduced a statutory levy aimed at providing funding to tackle this.

“We welcome the contribution that Safer Gambling Week makes. It provides a good opportunity to highlight the tools and support that is available to people who may need it.”

Also engaging with the campaign was Andrew Rhodes, CEO of the UK Gambling Commission, who reiterated the importance of this week’s activity for the industry and its commitment to consumer protection.

“While progress has been made, we must continue to ensure that the tools and protections available to consumers are effective and widely promoted.

“Collaboration and evidence-based action remain central to making gambling in Great Britain fairer, safer, and crime-free,” Rhodes commented.

Joining the responsible gambling conversation was also Louie French, Conservative Party MP and Shadow Minister for Culture, Media and Sport, who said: “I’m backing the Safer Gambling Week campaign to tackle gambling-related harm. This important initiative brings the industry together to support safe and responsible gambling.

“Millions of people safely enjoy a flutter every month, whether it’s on the horses, football, or the lottery. But for some, gambling can cause immense harm to their lives. It’s vital that the industry quickly identifies and supports these people.”

Interestingly, French also made a comment against the widely-speculated gambling tax increases that are expected to be announced with the UK’s new Budget on 26 November.

The public debate has been led by speculations whether Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves will increase the duties across the board or leave betting out of the equation.

In his Safer Gambling Week statement, French added: “If the Government taxes people away from regulated bookmakers, they’ll fuel unsafe betting online.”

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UK youth gambling rates stable despite survey changes

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The UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) has published the datasets of its Young People and Gambling Survey 2025 facing its now customary questioning.

The protection of adolescents from gambling remains one of the most emotive in UK gambling, particularly amid a backdrop of political concerns of digital harms and dysfunctional behaviours. Yet beyond the headlines lies a picture that is hard to frame by numbers and stats alone.

Participation rises but context matters

The Commission reports that 49% of young people aged 11–17 participated in some form of gambling in the past year. But this topline figure is under the context that the majority of activities are “legal, non-commercial, or informal,” ranging from arcade machines to private bets between friends.

Of significance, 30% of young people reported spending their own money on gambling — a modest rise from 27% in 2024.

The Commission attributes this increase primarily to a rise in unregulated, informal gambling, not underage access to licensed products. In fact:

21% spent money on arcade machines
14% bet with friends or family
5% played cards for money
Just 6% spent money on age‑restricted, regulated forms of gambling — exactly the same level as last year

Youth problem gambling “statistically stable”
The most politically sensitive figure — the youth problem gambling rate — is reported at 1.2%, down from 1.5% in 2024. The Gambling Commission is clear: this shift is “statistically stable,” meaning the change is not significant given sample size and margins of error.

But here is where industry analysts such as Dan Waugh of Regulus Partners who raise important questions.

The DSM‑IV‑MR‑J, used to classify “problem gambling”, is not a diagnostic tool. Its thresholds are broad: behaviours such as using lunch money to gamble or arguing with parents can count toward a score of “four or more” — the bar for an “adult problem gambler.”

By comparison, NHS Health Surveys, using adult screening tools (PGSI, DSM‑IV), consistently find near-zero problem gambling in 16–19‑year‑olds. If the “crisis” identified by DSM‑IV‑MR‑J disappears as soon as participants turn 16 or 18, something is off.

This leads Waugh and others to argue that the tool inflates prevalence and can create the appearance of a “youth gambling problem” that the harder data simply does not support.

Advertising high exposure but no causation
Advertising remains the political lightning rod. The survey shows:

49% of young people see gambling ads weekly on social media
47% see them in apps
Boys are particularly exposed (53% on YouTube vs 31% of girls)

But again, exposure does not mean influence. The Commission’s own data shows most young people do not act on these ads, and many of the ads they see are for lotteries, not high-risk gambling products.

Waugh also notes that some studies cited to support advertising restrictions use “extraordinarily wide definitions of children” — including people up to age 25 — or classify someone as “susceptible” if they refuse to say they will never gamble in the future. The framework is hardly rigorous.

Check the regulatory temperature

Operators recognise their responsibility to protect young people, and most already back: stricter ID checks, dedicated youth education programmes and heavily restricted marketing pathways.

But there is growing concern that selective readings of the YPGS are being used as a blunt tool to justify sweeping restrictions. Yes — policy should evolve and safeguarding matters. But policy built on misinterpreted or overly broad data will rarely deliver the intended outcomes.

A useful tool… but poorly used
The YPGS has been shown to have been one of the best resources that have helped to inform on youth behaviour, in particular with regards to first adolescent engagements with gambling..

However, when its findings are stripped of nuance or weaponised, it is little a guide to constructive policy and great simply for serving as a political sledgehammer.

If it means to actually improve protections for young people, then we need more accurate measures to determine youth/teen harms. Policy interventions need to be based on measured analysis, not alarmism as the data is useful. but the real concern lies in how it’s used.

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SPA wants centralised self-exclusion in Brazil by end of 2025

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Brazil is expected to launch a new centralised national self-exclusion system by the end of this year.

This was outlined in Normative Instruction Number 31 published by the Secretariat of Prizes and Bets of the Ministry of Finance (SPA-MF), which aims to strengthen the responsible gambling policies in the regulated fixed odds betting market that launched back in January of this year.

The system will allow players to voluntarily self-exclude not only from a single specific operator but also from all licensed betting platforms nation-wide if they choose to.

Regis Dudena, SPA Secretary, said: “We are moving forward with the expansion of the protection of people, which is the central concern of our Secretariat and Minister Fernando Haddad.

“We are giving people the possibility to decide if they want to temporarily restrict their exposure to betting, centrally and safely, including reducing their access to advertising. This is an advance that puts Brazil in a vanguard position in the world, in caring for our population.”

The system was technically put together by the Federal Data Processing Service (SEPRO) at the request of SPA, in collaboration with the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Sports, and Brazil’s Secretariat of Social Communication (SECOM). It was put as a priority in the country’s 2025/26 Regulatory Agenda published back in April.

Marcelo Kimati Dias, Director of the Mental Health Department at the Ministry of Health, commented: “In the context of mental health, the improvement of self-exclusion mechanisms will contribute to prevention and harm reduction strategies related to gambling disorder.”

As per Normative Instruction 31, operators will have up to 30 days from the instruction’s publication date (11 November) to ensure that they’ve implemented all necessary technical procedures that allow them to block self-excluded users and return any remaining deposits.

Additionally, operators will have 90 more days to comply with the new technical standards outlined in the recently-published Ordinance No. 2,579 that require them to offer deposit limit options for players on their platforms.

Alexandre Amorim, SEPRO President, said: “The advance in betting protection is a milestone for the maturation of the betting sector in the country, with Serpro’s technology ensuring, once again, transparency, security and social responsibility, always in accordance with data protection standards and the principles of digital sovereignty.”

The self-exclusion system is the latest in a series of efforts by Brazil’s SPA to strengthen player protection across the country, with the authority already actively preventing state benefits from social programmes like the Bolsa Familia Programme and the Continuous Benefit Payment from being used for gambling.

On a separate note, besides the self-exclusion system a potential gambling tax increase from 12% to 24% is also on the agenda, with the Senate set to vote on 18 November after multiple delays.

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TODAY: SBC Digital Player Protection: Shaping the future of RG

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Join SBC Media today (Wednesday, Nov. 12, 2025, as we present the latest iteration of SBC Digital Player Protection in partnership with 1xBet. The global conversation on safer gambling will take centre stage during a full-day digital-only conference dedicated to advancing responsible gaming, regulatory cooperation and player wellbeing across the international betting and gaming landscape. The event will unite regulators,…

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Lottstift presses Norsk Rikstoto on AML compliance failures 

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Norway’s monopoly regime is once again under fire from the state regulator, raising more questions about the future of the market.

Lottstift, the Norwegian gambling authority, is considering the issue of a penalty for Norsk Rikstoto – the country’s exclusive horse betting provider – in relation to a number of AML deficiencies.

An audit by Lottstift for the period between 6 February and 27 May 2025 has revealed a list of violations of Norway’s Money Laundering Act, which threatens Norsk Rikstoto with a fine of up to NOK 2mn (£150k) and an additional NOK 50k per day until “the deviation is corrected”.

What are the failures?
According to the investigation, the AML compliance team of Norsk Rikstoto consists of an insufficient number of people and relies on manual work procedures, which leaves “great” room for improvement in terms of automation and reducing the risks of errors due to overburdening workloads.

Another identified shortfall is Norsk Rikstoto’s customer risk assessments. Lottstift reported that the operator should make improvements as to how it classifies customers based on their risk profile, with the current distinction between monitoring and follow-up procedures not quite clear yet.

On the topic of risk management, the regulator also advised Norsk Rikstoto to conduct a review of its internal policies and ensure that the risk management process is harmonised across all departments.

Compliance documentation was another identified deficiency, with Lottstift stating: “Both the review of sample checks and what we observed during on-site inspections have shown that there is a lack of a systematic approach to documentation and logging of implemented measures, assessments and choices. We saw that some customers/cases have better descriptions of the course of the case than others.”

Finally, Lottstift focused on how effective Norsk Rikstoto is when reporting the implementation of audit recommendations, also identifying room for improvement there.

Atle Hamar, Director of Lottstift, commented: “They have deliberately set aside absolute legal requirements that should enable them to uncover and prevent money laundering.

“When they do not have good enough systems, the risk of them being exploited for money laundering increases.

“Money laundering is a serious social problem. We expect that a monopoly operator with over 170,000 players follows the law and has better control over how they will uncover and prevent money laundering.”

Lottstift lawyers say a fine is justified
Lottstift additionally released an official notice, where Tatyana Søreide Klepaker, Senior Legal Advisor for the regulator, reflected on whether a fine should be imposed.

According to Klepaker, the offences are pervasive and serious enough to suggest that a fine should be imposed.

“After a comprehensive assessment of the case….we find that a violation fine should be imposed,” she wrote. “Our assessment is that Norsk Rikstoto has good financial capacity, and that imposing the violation fee will not be disproportionately burdensome for Norsk Rikstoto’s finances.”

Norway at a crossroads
Besides Norsk Rikstoto, the regulator has also been closely monitoring Norsk Tipping – Norway’s state-owned provider of lottery, sports betting and instant games.

It has also found itself embroiled in controversy more than once over the last year, having been found violating multiple compliance standards – from AML breaches to marketing regulations.

With scrutiny over the two operators constantly piling up, the future of Norway’s monopoly market remains at a crossroads given that it will become the only monopoly regime in the Nordics after Finland transitions to a licenced market in 2027.

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Gambling Commission concludes four-part study on black market

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The UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) has published the last out of a part-four series on its approach towards the black market.

While comprehensive, the Yonder Consulting-conducted report did recognise some of the caveats that obstruct the exact estimate of the prominence of the online black market in the UK.

Consumer awareness, drivers, and motivations
To understand the current trends better, the UKGC attempted to first build a profile of the typical black market player with part one of its study, published on 18 September.

With the agreement that it shouldn’t be treated as representative of all those who gamble online, the study outlined four typical characteristics of the users that engage with illegal gambling.

These are generally men, between the age of 18 and 24, who are active gamblers, and who usually rank eight or above on the PGSI problem gambling scale. They typically go to the black market to bet on football, for online bingo, or to play online fruit or slot games.

The motivation behind going out of their way to find illegal sites are most often better odds and offers, games unavailable elsewhere, access to alternative payments like crypto, no stake limits, and a low entry barrier – meaning weak ID or financial checks.

Still, the majority of responses painted illegal gambling as “supplementary rather than exclusive”, meaning people favoured more time and money spent on licensed websites.

Interestingly, however, this seemed to contradict another key highlight – the Commission established that players generally had low levels of awareness of the illegal iGaming market, with responses denying illegal play but indicating differently elsewhere, and vice versa.

Furthermore, only a minority of people was able to name specific black market operators – “numerous” responses named licensed providers as such. Almost all, however, responded that having a licence in the UK is important.

In conclusion, the first part of the Commission’s report found a “disconnect between perceived license importance, understanding if an operator is licensed, and knowledge of how to verify that”.

For the second part of its report, the regulator measured consumers’ rates of engagement with the online black market. Between May 2024 and July 2025, a total of 1,000 unique black market websites were identified, but “no overall increase in engagement in Great Britain”, the Commission stated.

Disruption strategies
Part three highlighted the three tactics that the gambling authority is utilising to hit the black market where it hurts the most. These are Regulation and Investigation (RI), Technological Advances (TA), and Marketing Strategy (MS).

RI includes legal and enforcement measures, such as cross-border collaboration with other institutions, tracking of illegal websites, blocking of such websites, and blocking payments to them, among others.

TA, meanwhile, focuses on eradicating the tools that black market operators are utilising to avoid scrutiny, such as indexing manipulation, VPN use, AI to evade detection, and URL concealment.

Lastly, MS deals with disrupting advertisers and affiliates based in the UK, enforcing advertising standards through the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), as well as in-depth analysis of SEO marketing.

Estimating the size of the online black market
The latest and final chapter in this four-part study uncovers the three approaches that the UKGC is taking to estimate just how prominent the black market is.

Through the dwell-time approach, the regulator estimates average engagement and time-spent-on-site data – but it largely relies on assumptions, and each additional assumption adds additional margins for error, the UKGC recognised.

The channelisation approach involves comparing engagement rates with the legal and illegal market, but the caveat here is also the need for multiple assumptions.

With the third approach, the UKGC bets on survey-based data. However, this can also often lead to misrepresented assumptions.

All in all, the conclusion was that illegal online gambling is “clandestine” and its exact size often changes and almost always remains in the shadows, with participation rates diluted by a wide range of consumer behaviours.

Reflecting on the latest findings and painting the way forward, Ben Haden, UKGC Director of Research and Statistics, commented: “We have set out areas of work to focus upon. By breaking down the challenge into its constituent parts, it is possible to see a pathway to making an estimate that is fit for purpose.

“Getting there will also need input from operators – data on the legal market will help us strengthen assumptions and update our evidence base. We are looking forward to further conversations to clarify what we need and how operators can help.

“While the exercise of trying to understand the macro-metric of the size of the illegal market is important, the generation of trend data – and insight into specific websites to target disruption activity, is arguably even more vital. We are pleased we are now able to better understand these trends and supply key operational data to our Enforcement Team.”

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Argentina to begin roll-out of new advertising rules for online gambling

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Argentina is introducing new federal legislation on gambling advertising, setting out rules designed to protect young audiences and vulnerable consumers.

Following months of debate in the Chamber of Deputies, the Ministry of Economy confirmed through the Official Gazette that the first stage of the framework has been approved. The new rules define how gambling and betting products may be advertised across the country’s 23 provinces and 1,170 municipalities.

This morning the official gazette of the Ministry of the Economy, confirmed that initial measures have been agreed to govern the advertising of gambling products/services on Argentine media platforms, TV, radio, and social media influencers.

Under the new regulation, gambling advertisements must be concise, factual and limited to essential information, avoiding any exaggerated or misleading claims.

All advertisements are now required to include two mandatory warnings:

“Compulsive gambling is harmful to your health”

“For +18 customers”

These warnings must appear in the lower section of the advertisement, using a minimum font size of four millimeters and accounting for at least 5% of the total height of the ad. The media must ensure that changes have been applied to advertising content by 30 November.

In audio-visual formats, they must remain visible for no less than five seconds, while in radio adverts they must be read clearly, without background music, and at a natural speaking pace.

The Secretariat of Industry and Commerce, which drafted the regulation, explained that the objective is to ensure clarity and transparency rather than overwhelm consumers with unreadable text or excessive fine print:

“By drowning consumers in too much information, advertisers risk leading them to make irrational or incorrect decisions. Presenting too many details in an unreadable format, or too briefly, can result in essential information being ignored.”

For the first time, the new advertising code extends to influencers and digital content creators who promote gambling or betting platforms — a decision prompted by growing concern over the spread of gambling-related content online.

As reported by SBC Noticias, concerns about gambling addiction were first raised by the Buenos Aires Executive, after public health and education authorities found that 34% of minors had gambled despite existing age-verification checks.

In response, Jorge Macri, Chief of Government of Buenos Aires, suspended the issuance of new gambling licences, insisting that stricter rules were needed to protect minors and regulate advertising.

The Buenos Aires measures increased pressure on national lawmakers to act at a federal level, but the Chamber of Deputies missed its legislative target due to the provincial election calendar across Argentina in 2025.

Resolution 446/2025 now stands as the most tangible step in Argentina’s long-awaited reform process, paving the way for wider federal oversight through five civic committees responsible for public health, communications, criminal legislation, social action and youth welfare.

The new framework has been welcomed as a step forward for consumer protection and responsible gambling in some corners. However, skeptics feel that the measures remain too light-touch, focusing primarily on disclosure and presentation rules rather than robust enforcement or support programmes for at-risk groups.

For now, Argentina’s gambling sector enters a period of transition — one in which federal advertising rules will become mandatory, though their effectiveness in reducing youth exposure and gambling-related harm remains uncertain.

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Iceland calls for new gambling supervision against unlicensed websites 

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The Althing of Iceland has been urged to consider drastic reforms on how gambling is supervised and governed, as concerns mount over public health, online exposure, and the lack of state oversight on illegal gambling.

Calls for change follow the Ministry of Health’s new agreement with SÁÁ, the national addiction-treatment association, which for the first time provides state-funded therapy for gambling addiction – a condition that is recognised as a growing public concern.

The move has reignited debate over Iceland’s legal inconsistencies on gambling, that have been overlooked for more than two decades without reform.

No oversight of harms
Health Minister Alma D. Möller described gambling addiction as a “major social and public health problem”, warning that Icelanders are reported to be spending around ISK 36bn (€250m) per-year on unlicensed online gambling websites.

The figure highlights the limited market reach of Iceland’s two licensed operators — Íslensk Getspá /Getraunir and the University of Iceland Lottery, and confirms that most Icelandic players wager through unlicensed, foreign-based websites with no interaction with the state-owned enterprises.

The liabilities are well known, yet enforcement remains minimal. There are no penalties for media outlets that promote unlicensed websites or payment providers or banks who process transactions for offshore gambling companies.

Observers note that advertising for international betting brands is routinely displayed to Icelandic citizens via international media, with no consequence.

New regulator needed
Lawmakers and civil-society groups, including Samtök áhugafólks um spilafíkn (SÁS), are now calling for the creation of a single national supervisory authority to oversee gambling activity, enforce advertising rules and fund harm-reduction programmes.

Critics argue that Iceland’s current framework, chiefly the Lotteries Act No. 38/2005, is outdated and unable to address the realities of digital gambling and cross-border payments.

Push for control
Minister Möller said the government must “look at how neighbouring countries regulate this activity” and ensure that public health and consumer protection remain central to any legislative review.

“To take money from an industry that exploits addiction and can have such severe consequences is simply not morally acceptable,” Möller said.

Parliamentary discussions are expected before the end of the year, with MPs weighing whether Iceland should introduce a unified gambling regulator, tighter advertising controls, and stronger inter-ministerial cooperation on financial monitoring, media accountability and addiction support.

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