The Gambling Commission has introduced a new “Tell us something in confidence” service that enables individuals to report various activities and concerns related to the gambling industry.
This service is designed to address issues such as match-fixing, betting integrity, underage gambling, money laundering suspicions, suspicious activities, and unlicensed gambling or criminal behavior.
Users of this service have the option to submit their reports anonymously and can include supporting evidence such as photographs and documents.
Additionally, users can choose to share their contact details if they wish to be contacted regarding their case.
However, it’s important to note that this new offering primarily serves as a means to identify and report criminal or suspicious activities within the gambling sector.
For complaints about gambling businesses, consumers are encouraged to follow the existing complaint process.
The Gambling Commission emphasizes that its confidential telephone service for reporting criminal or suspicious activities will continue to operate as usual.
The “Tell us something in confidence” service is meant to provide information related to criminal activity under the Gambling Act 2005 or any other regulatory information deemed useful by the Commission.
The launch of this service coincides with the release of the latest statistics for the UK’s gambling market, covering the period from April 2022 to March 2023.
According to the data, there has been a notable increase in land-based gambling, with a 6.8% year-on-year growth in Gross Gambling Yield (GGY), reaching £15.10 billion ($19.13 billion/€17.61 billion).
This figure includes contributions from all licensed remote and land-based gambling operators and represents a 6.6% increase from the pre-lockdown period in March 2020.
When excluding reported lotteries from the data, GGY increased even more, reaching £10.9 billion, which is a 9.3% rise compared to the previous year (2021-22) and a 7.6% increase compared to 2019-20.
Charity GambleAware also released annual figures for the National Gambling Treatment Service (NGTS), revealing that over a third of all support service contacts in 2022-23 were related to gambling-related harm from online slot games.
A total of 6,645 individuals reached out to NGTS during this period, with 85% accessing treatment directly, while the remaining 15% sought support to address the impact of someone else’s gambling behavior.
The most common reasons for seeking treatment were online slots (37.9%), followed by internet sports betting (15.6%), and fixed-odds gaming machines in bookmaker shops (12.8%).
Sports betting and gaming machines in bookmakers each accounted for 10.1% of contacts.