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While gambling may seem like a spot of fun that you can enjoy whenever you want thanks to the rise of online casinos and smartphones, some players might wonder if it’s really safe.
With extreme cases of players losing over £70,000 in a single bet in recent years, it’s important to know that good gambling often means playing it safe. Besides having a good betting strategy and a tight bankroll, there are organisations out there that aim to help you and keep gambling fair and well-regulated. The UKGC (United Kingdom Gambling Commission) is one of these organisations, and they’ve made it their mission to ensure that casinos are well-regulated, fair, and ultimately that the players are protected from causing any serious financial harm to themselves.
What is the UKGC?
The United Kingdom Gambling Commission was founded back in 2007 and set out with a goal to ensure that anyone who enabled any form of gambling within the UK were strictly regulated and held to the tightest standards. Since then, they’ve managed to make it law that anyone who operates any form of gambling, even simply having a few slot machines in your local pub and grill, has to be regulated by the commission in order to not be fined and shut down.
The idea for centralizing the regulatory body in the UK was quite unique at the time, as for a long time, most casinos would try and acquire licenses from countries like Malta, Gibraltar, and Curaçao in order to get more relaxed regulation from these countries and ultimately pay less on their annual license renewal fees.
Now though, every site like those on this online casino guide, real world casino, and bookie in the UK has to get a license from the UKGC and go through rigorous standards checking to ensure that they’re compliant with the regulations set out by this commission. They check everything, from the RTP (Return To Player) on the machines or games hosted by the company to ensure that they’re at a fair rate and that the players have a good chance of making a winning from each bet, to how they process payments and whether all their financial records are up-to-date.
They have also mandated that every casino must have some form of self-exclusion feature available on their site or facility. This essentially means that any player who would like to can sign a waiver that will automatically get them banned from the venue for a period of 6 months, 2 years, or 5 years at a time. This is done to help ensure that responsible gambling is always prioritised, and that if someone feels like they need a time-out and want to stop, they can without too much trouble. They also ensure that casinos pay a small amount of their profits to helping treat people who struggle with gambling too much so that the industry ultimately remains ethical.
New Rules
With the advent of smartphones and the rise of online casinos, the UKGC scrambled to try and develop regulations to help keep this market safe for users. The increased accessibility means people are more likely to gamble more frequently, and there were no specific rules in place to consider how people might gamble in our mobile-first era.
Recent additions to the gambling laws in the UK are:
- Casinos must pay an annual levy to help create treatment facilities for helping people who gamble too much.
- Stake or betting limits on slot games that limit each bet from £2 – £15 max.
- Added player protection ensures those at risk of losing money that they cannot afford are treated differently by the casino and limited or disallowed before they cause too much financial damage.
- Additional legal powers for the UKGC to deal with black market or illegal gambling.
- The reformation of bonus offers so that they don’t entice players to spend too much money at the casino.
- Stricter rules preventing under-18s from gambling at slot machines or on mobile devices.
- New ombudsmen for regulating the player protection rules and helping players who’ve sustained losses due to a casino failing to adhere to these rules.
- A review of horse racing betting levies which could be placed on horse racing specifically, yet ensure that it thrives.
It’s important to remember that these rules are not put in place to limit or restrict the amount of fun you are allowed to have at a casino or when betting on the horses, but rather quite the opposite. The idea is that people will likely actually enjoy gambling a lot more when they know that they are protected by law and guaranteed certain fail-safes in order to ensure that the house is being honest and ethical, and that there are measures in place to protect them from losing their life savings.
While these laws will help you to some extent, it’s important to remember that the responsibility still lies largely in your hands. You should always have a betting strategy worked out before you start gambling and be sure to stick to it. You should stick to reputable casinos that are licenced by the UKGC. Additionally, have a bankroll rule set in place and adhere to it strictly. Set out a budget for how much you can spend in a month on gambling and once you reach this limit, stop! It’s no fun putting yourself at risk when gambling: the best gamblers out there stick to rules like this, so be more like a pro and gamble responsibly.
David Prior
David Prior is the editor of Today News, responsible for the overall editorial strategy. He is an NCTJ-qualified journalist with over 20 years’ experience, and is also editor of the award-winning hyperlocal news title Altrincham Today. His LinkedIn profile is here.
