Flutter Entertainment UK and Ireland’s director of risk and safer gambling, Luke Sugden, has called for stronger regulation of social media platforms to help stem the tide of advertising from unlicensed operators.
Speaking on a panel at the Ethical Gambling Forum on Wednesday, 29 April, Sugden attested that the onus shouldn’t be on licensed operators to clamp down on their unregulated counterparts.
He said: “We are a well-established, regulated operator, and we should have a good right to exist within the market. We will adhere to all the regulations, we’ll go beyond, and as a result of that, we should be allowed to market.
“We should be allowed to advertise to our customers, providing products to our customers, and it shouldn’t necessarily be our role to then try and clamp down on the black market.
“We need to understand what’s going on, and we need to help and collaborate where we can, but we can’t police the black market.”
Research published by global intelligence firm WARC earlier this month estimated black market operators will spend £845m on advertising before the end of the year, with the figure excepted to exceed £1bn by 2028.
By that time, the report claimed, black market operators would outspend regulated companies on advertising.
Sugden added that stronger regulation of social media would help, suggesting gambling advertising has enough reputational issues to combat without adding in extra headaches caused by illegal operators.
He continued: “It’s very difficult to stop illegal operators advertising on big social media platforms. It’s not top [priority] of the social media platforms to take the content down. It has huge reach, and like we’ve seen with other parallel examples of worse content than that, those big social media companies are not good at being proactive and taking it down.
“What we would want is strong intervention. Some of the content in the adverts look like legitimate gambling advertising. There’s enough noise about gambling advertising already without the own goals and problematic advertising out there.
“We really want a strong regulator, not just on the sites themselves, but on the advertising and the social media companies that allow that advertising to get out there.
“If you stem the flow, if people can’t even see that the sites are there, you’re going to stem how many people go and that’s going to really cut people off.”
Sugden also suggested unlicensed operators pose a greater threat to society than just taking market share away from legal operators.
He said: “The research use cases that we’ve seen, which are some of the worst examples, show that there is dark underside to it.
“It’s things like criminals and organised criminal gangs, and that money leads into things like terrorist financing. It’s no different to the illegal cigarette market or the illegal drug market; ultimately, organised criminal gangs are behind a lot of these and are running them.
“I don’t want to say it’s the whole illegal market as there’s clearly a sliding scale there, but there is a very serious consequence. It’s not just taking market share, it’s not just hurting customers, it’s not just reaching problem gamblers, it’s not just not paying tax. It’s also then funding things that we don’t want to happen.”
The post Flutter safer gambling chief: Operators shouldn’t have to police the black market first appeared on EGR Intel.
Luke Sugden calls for stronger regulation of social media platforms which allow black market advertising and argues the licensed sector needs support from regulators and authorities
The post Flutter safer gambling chief: Operators shouldn’t have to police the black market first appeared on EGR Intel.