Key points:
- The data was collected over a year by licensed gambling providers
- The KSA has analysed the data to identify risky and harmful gambling behaviour
- This can then be applied to interventions and responsible gambling measures
The Kansspelautoriteit, the Dutch Gambling Authority (KSA), has published a study into risky gambling behaviours.
This will allow the KSA and various licence holders to explore areas other than just large losses when it comes to identifying potentially harmful gambling behaviour.
The study focused on five pillars of behaviour: Intensity, loss of control, increase in gambling, operator behaviour and game features.
The loss of control section also contained data specifically for young people, which was reflected in recent action against seven gambling operators for breaching advertising regulations by appealing to younger audiences.
In the report, the KSA noted that: “A final lesson was that mean values are not very helpful. Problematic gambling is often characterised by outliers on certain days, not by the behaviour on an average day.”
Good to know: The KSA did not include players who have a low probability of being at-risk, defined by those who gamble less than five days and lose less than €300 ($311.90) in a month, to maintain the focus on risky and harmful gambling
Some of the indicators of potentially risky gambling included playing at night, with the data showing players are more than twice as likely to be playing casino games at night than sports betting.
This can be particularly important to know when monitoring someone’s behaviour after they’ve already expressed difficulty with problem gambling.
Not only that, but placing sports bets at night could also be an indicator of risky behaviour as it occurs less often and deviates more strongly from the norm.
Future projects from the KSA will look into these figures, as well as analyse any differences between house vs player-to-player games, verticals and different types of sports, competitions or even bets.
