The Sports Betting Series: Part 5 – How to improve regulation

Are regulators doing enough to safeguard people against betting companies and their aggressive customer acquisition strategies? Problem gamblers account for 46% of betting company revenue while making up only 5% of players. Up to 1 in 20 British men will, at least for a time, be a problem gambler, something that can take decades to recover from. So what are regulators doing to help?

Here to answer this is Matt Zarb-Cousin, a former teenage problem gambler who went on to co-found Gamban, the award-winning software that blocks devices from accessing gambling sites and apps. He is also a long-time industry campaigner advocating for gambling regulation reform in the UK.

In this episode, we discuss: (1) how current regulation is insufficient to address modern betting technology; (2) what regulators could do to reduce harm; and (3) how sports betting is being spread into new markets, in part, to ‘bait’ people onto more dangerous games such as slot machines.