UK Gambling Commission, the British regulator for gambling, have shaped a new strategy for 2018. The new focus will first and foremost protect the players from preventing problem online gambling. The whole plan is a 4-year strategy that can be broken down into five different areas.
The UK market for online casino is well-established. However, it keeps developing at a fast pace. There are always new games and opportunities coming up, every year and every month. This makes it harder and harder for regulators to predict what is going to happen.
UKGC is one of the oldest gaming licenses. Still, due to the highly technological environment, they always have to be on their those to spot changes in operator offerings and player behaviour at non-UK sites as well as sites in Great Britain.
Historically, the focus has been on the players and the gaming operators. However, the new strategy does mainly focus on player protection.
This to prevent gamblers with addiction problems to be exposed for too much pressure coming from marketing and campaigns addressed by gambling companies.
With new guidelines and standards for offerings and outbound marketing lined out in the new strategy, the UK Gambling Commission is doing all they can to raise the bar compared to previously.
The new strategy for UK Gambling
One of the main new implementations is the proposal to ban marketing promotions during sporting events.
This is an order to protect vulnerable customers as well as protecting children from exposure to gambling and casino promotions.
However, many punters would argue that in-play betting now is such a natural element during sporting events, that it is hard to remove.
Another part of the new strategy is to reward operators taking social responsibility and those who are acting against problem gambling.
After all, gambling should be more about fun than anything else. With new technology such as VR and Bitcoin becoming household, there will certainly be more changes to the ever-changing environment online gambling is.
But with fair play, transparency and responsibility for the customers as the main priorities, the UKGC are doing their best to bring back the pure fun from online casinos and gambling again. We can most definitely expect more news on the subject soon.