The six-week Call for Evidence period launched by the UK Government in the end of October closes today. The country’s top officials have been collecting information from bookmakers to prepare their triennial review of the local gambling industry.
It has been announced earlier in 2016 that this year’s probe will be focused on the controversial gaming machines known as fixed-odds betting terminals. Such devices can be found in high street betting shops around the UK and have the advantage of wide popularity among gambling customers.
FOBTs allow players to place bets of up to £100 every 20 seconds. This is believed to be making them highly addictive, and responsible gambling organizations, UK top officials, and other concerned parties have been calling for stiffer measures to be devised and implemented for the protection of the vulnerable portion of those playing on the machines.
This year’s industry review will presumably amend the existing regulations so as to discourage compulsive gambling on FOBTs. As mentioned above, the period for information collection is set to close later today. It is yet to be seen how the Government will use the information it has collected on FOBTs, their stakes, and the prizes they pay. According to industry experts, if amendments are indeed made, they are likely to be introduced some time next spring.
The reduction of the maximum stake FOBTs accept has been the measure most talked about over the past several months. Responsible gambling champions have argued that maximum bets should be slashed to £10 or even £2.
Talks about such a drastic change have unleashed waves of concerns among major UK gambling operators. The country’s top bookmakers, companies like Ladbrokes Coral, William Hill, Betfred, and Paddy Power Betfair, operate hundreds and even thousands of betting shops with hundreds and thousands of FOBTs in these. They depend highly on their retail businesses and a reduction of maximum bets on their gaming machines may and will cause double-digit drops in the annual profits of some of the operators. This, in turn, may lead to betting shops closures.
The UK gambling industry has faced serious regulatory changes and challenges over the past several years. The introduction of the 15% Point of Consumption Tax and the increased Machine Games Duty may be named the most notable such changes. These additional taxes resulted in an unseen before consolidation within the industry that brought together some of the country’s leading operators (Paddy Power and Betfair, GVC Holdings and bwin.party, and Ladbrokes and Coral).
If changes in the way FOBTs are operated in betting shops are as dramatic as many claim they would be, a new wave of merger and acquisition deals will probably be released, further changing UK’s as well as the global gambling landscape.
