UKGC: Giving Players Information Isn’t Enough for Real Choice

The UK Gambling Commission has published a new study concluding that giving players information about a bet or game is not, by itself, enough to guarantee they can make a genuinely informed choice. The research, carried out by the Commission’s Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) and published this week, forms part of the regulator’s Consumer Voice Programme under its 2024-2027 strategy, and is being used to shape how the Commission defines “informed choice” for gambling consumers going forward.

What’s actually changed

Providing consumers with information is not enough to ensure they can make informed choices when gambling, according to research from the UK Gambling Commission.

The regulator concluded that informed choice should be viewed as an ongoing state, highlighting how product design, pace of play and emotional state can impact consumers’ ability to make choices.

The study was thorough in scope:
it drew on a review of 53 sources, three deliberative focus groups and four in-depth interviews with players at higher risk of gambling harm.
Among the core findings,
information can fail to support decision-making if it is difficult to find, understand or use, and the report acknowledged that consumers have different levels of literacy, understanding and capability.

Crucially, the research put some of the responsibility back on operators.
It flagged how operators have a responsibility to support informed choice and protect consumers, particularly those at greater risk of gambling harm.
On what that should look like in practice,
the research suggested that rules, odds, mechanics, costs and risks should have the same prominence as promotions and rewards.

The Commission also set out where this work is heading next.
The Commission said the research will help inform its development of a consumer-led definition of informed choice, with the proposed approach going beyond the availability of information and instead focusing on consumers’ ability to both understand and act on relevant material throughout their gambling activity.

Strategy manager Donna Bateman, who led the project, framed the exercise as filling a gap in the regulator’s understanding. As she put it, informed choice is “a key tenet of consumer protection and rights law” that depends on
giving the consumer the right information at the right time in a way they understand so they can make a genuine decision.
Bateman added that while much was already known about the concept,
the Commission “wanted a deeper insight into what this means for gambling consumers, both as a concept and in practice.”

What it means for you

If you gamble online in the UK, this research is a direct signal that the terms and conditions, odds displays and risk warnings you scroll past may not be doing their job as intended. The study’s finding that
product design, pace of play and emotional state can impact consumers’ ability to make choices
effectively acknowledges something many players already sense: a fast-spinning slot or an in-play betting screen is not a neutral environment for weighing up costs and risks.

The research also examined how players themselves see the split of responsibility. Participants in the study broadly backed a shared approach, though
their expectations changed depending on the stage of gambling.
The study additionally found that
some protections already exist but remain poorly understood or difficult for consumers to locate, treating this as evidence that awareness of available tools still needs attention.
In practice, that means safer-gambling tools such as deposit limits, time-outs and self-exclusion may be less useful than they should be if you don’t know they exist or can’t find them easily on your operator’s site or app.

For now, there is no new rule forcing operators to change their apps or websites. But the Commission has been explicit that operators
have a responsibility to support informed choice and protect consumers, particularly those at greater risk of gambling harm
– language that often precedes future guidance or codes of practice.

The bigger picture

This report sits within the Commission’s wider Consumer Voice Programme, the ongoing research strand feeding into its 2024-2027 strategy for improving the gambling landscape.
The BIT report shows the complexities of “informed choice” as a concept and provides useful insights for stakeholders into consumer experiences and expectations, and how changes could be made to enhance decision-making processes.

It follows a pattern of the Commission using behavioural and consumer research to build the evidence base for future rule-making, rather than legislating first and asking questions later. Given the study’s suggestion that
rules, odds, mechanics, costs and risks should have the same prominence as promotions and rewards
, operators may want to look closely at how their bonus advertising compares with their risk disclosures well before any formal requirement arrives – particularly with the regulator’s broader White Paper reform programme and financial-risk check pilots already under way.

Sources

• SBC News – Gambling Commission sets out to establish how informative ‘informed choice’ is
• next.io – New UKGC research calls for greater emphasis on operator responsibility
• Gambling News – UKGC Says Operators Should Do More to Help Players Make Informed Decisions
• Newsnet5 – UKGC Calls on Gambling Operators to Improve Player Informed Decision-Making
• World Casino Directory – UKGC Study Reviews Operator Role in Informed Gambling Choice