Self-Exclusion - what progress in recent years?

[maxd]

Well, we’re a few years on since the last time we visited this subject in depth and the Self-Exclusion (SE) scene has changed a bit. There has been good progress on some fronts —the subject of today’s post — and some serious back-sliding too, but we’ll cover that train wreck another day.

So, progress! My original article was none too kind to the UKGC and what I saw as some failings in their efforts to provide a sane and workable SE system for players. What follows isn’t 100% accurate but it’s a rough chronology of the evolution of SE at the UKGC:

• 2018-ish UKGC introduces sister-casino Self-Exclusion, meaning that a SE request at one casino should apply to all related casino properties.
• 2020-ish: For reasons that were never made clear the SE rules were rolled-back a bit in that the definition of a “sister casino” was limited to a given license. In other words if a casino group bought a handful of licenses they could distribute their casinos among them and each license group was effectively fire-walled from all the others in terms of their SE responsibilities.
  • eg. a player’s SE at Casino X under license XYZ legally had nothing to do with Casino A under license ABC, even though everyone (including the UKGC) knew full well that same company held both licenses.
• 2020-202?: most jurisdictions — very much including Malta — applied the same “sister casinos under a given license” principle and players suffered endless confusion and abuse because of it. The casino owners laughed and waved the “different license” excuse and basically got away with ignoring a great many SE complaints.
• Now: The UKGC (at least) has evolved somewhat beyond the “different license” loop-hole. At some point they took the step to have the LCCP — the document actually specifying the operating rules for casinos — expand the scope of sister casino Self-Exclusion across licenses and bumped the responsibility up to the ownership level. (see below)

The relevant section of the LCCP for this discussion is section 3 Protection of children and other vulnerable persons, subsection 3.9.1 Identification of individual persons:

So obviously “sister casino SE” has evolved since the last time we looked at it. Here the UKGC is initially saying that SE must extend to all gambling “with the licensee” but that allows the obvious “different license” loop-hole. It looks like the UKGC later came back and in 3 and 4 is attempting to have SE extend across all properties within a “group company” whether that be multiple licenses or not.

Sadly there’s still a back-door for casinos to escape responsibility. That “must take all reasonable steps to comply” clause could well allow a naughty “group company” to claim that they did indeed take “all reasonable steps” but sadly the system failed and the player’s SE request was not fully applied to the applicable properties. Try proving that they didn’t “take all reasonable steps”! This is a bus-sized hole in this particular clause of the LCCP and one can only hope that the UKGC is well aware of that and doesn’t put up with BS from the casinos abusing it to escape responsibility.

In future updates we’ll look at some of the other jurisdictions and see where their sister casino Self-Exclusion policies currently stand.

Regards,

Max Drayman
Forum Moderator

 

[dunover]

Anyone remember the good old EMSEB days? (look it up on here!)

The original system was abusive because the KYC would be done only when a player actioned a withdrawal, only to be told "you're excluded at X casino under our licence so you cannot win from Y casino with us."

Win-Draw only for the licence holder as if the player lost, they would seldom realise that they wouldn't have been paid anyway. If they won, winnings were voided and stakes (sometimes) were refunded.

This is why several years ago thousands of players at 888's plethora of properties received refunds when it turned out they (888) had accepted losing deposits from players excluded already at one or more of their other sites.

Alas, this didn't happen to EveryMatrix victims because they lost their licence beforehand.

Agreed, it's a minefield and hard to administer these cross-pollinated sites but ultimately if the licence holder has numerous properties it is indeed their responsibility to action RG across them all.