Share
The International Gaming Standards Association (IGSA) has created a responsible gaming committee.
The committee will support regulators and operators through something IGSA calls the “responsible gaming maturity model” (RGMM). The committee will be made up of IGSA board members and Alan Feldman, a UNLV International Gaming Institute Distinguished Fellow and chair emeritus of the International Center for Responsible Gaming.
“The time has come to create a global standard, process and path for predictive responsible gaming,”
IGSA Chairman Earle G. Hall said in a statement. “Regulators have done an incredible job of creating their individual approaches. It is now time to pull the best practices together into a journey from discovery to quantitative management.”
Responsible Gaming Maturity Model is the heart of the mission
According to IGSA, its RGMM is a framework that helps regulators and operators move to a new level of responsible gaming management. That help can take multiple forms depending on how basic or advanced a participant’s responsible gaming initiatives are:
- Implementing basic responsible gambling policies
- Managing a dashboard of data and key performance indicators based on the participant’s responsible gambling data
IGSA’s end goal for participants in its RGMM program is to provide “prediction and preventative protection.” In other words, IGSA’s committee will help regulators and operators come up with a way to predict a particular gambler’s propensity for problem gambling. Regulators and operators might then use that predictive model to craft targeted ads or notifications for users who may be moving toward problem gambling.
“It is time to shift the paradigm to a data-driven predictability model to remove the tremendous burden on regulators and operators,” Hall said. “We are excited by the overwhelming response by our members, affiliates, and partners to be a part of this movement.”
Responsible gaming initiatives are popping up across the country
The repeal of the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act in 2018 was the catalyst for the launch of sports betting in dozens of states over the past five years.
As the number of legal gamblers in the US has grown, so has the number of problem gamblers. Additionally, professional and amateur athletes have made headlines for betting scandals.
These developments seemed to have sparked renewed interest in responsible gaming policies and approaches. Here are a few examples of that:
- New Jersey lawmakers submitted a bill in May that would require universities and public colleges that partner with a sportsbook to provide responsible gambling materials to students.
- Michigan lawmakers proposed a bill that would require the state Department of Education to develop a responsible gaming curriculum for public and private school students.
- iGaming company Entain announced a three-year partnership between its responsible-gaming-focused Entain Foundation and the NHL Alumni Association.
- The National Council on Problem Gambling published its 2022 report in January, noting that most states that offer online gambling don’t meet its Internet Responsible Gambling Standards.
Roughly two million people (1% of the population) have a severe gambling problem, while four to six million people (2%-3% of the population) have a mild or moderate gambling problem, according to NCPG estimates.
