THE JOURNEY SO FAR…
Hi, I’m Ben Wright. I’ve been working on Safer Gambling since the start of 2019 and it’s been a fascinating journey.
I took up this role for two reasons, really. Firstly (and most importantly), because I want to do the right thing. We’re nothing without our customers, so they should be protected.
Secondly, because in 2018, I heard a talk from Mark Potter, which had a profound and lasting effect on me.
Mark is from one of our partners, EPIC Risk Management, and he was speaking at The Gathering – a company-wide event we hold every year. He told his life story; of how gambling nearly ruined his and his family’s lives. I found it incredibly moving.
When the chance came to work in Safer Gambling, I jumped at it.
Although I knew what we as a business were doing in the Safer Gambling world, I was a relative novice – albeit with a passion – coming into it.
But, with the help of an incredible Safer Gambling team, I’ve gathered a huge amount of information and data on the topic from academic and customer research.
And one thing became apparent to me very early on: there’s no silver bullet that will make gambling safer.
MAKING GAMBLING SAFER
So what we’re committed to here is investing in data and technology, and developing it, refining our processes and improving our training — so when it all works together, we can better identify and interact early with customers, where possible, to prevent gambling disorders from developing.
We’re creating a culture of testing and learning — dropping what doesn’t work quickly and focussing our efforts on something that does.
A lot of our work is about meeting with other areas of the business and letting them know what we do — and I probably enjoy this the most. Our teams are passionate about Safer Gambling, and it’s because they now understand what we do, and they can see how they can help.
We’re proud of what we do and we want our teams to know this and feel the same way.
We’ve launched our Safer Gambling Governance Board. It’s where our strategy is presented, debated and agreed with members of our leadership team and a panel of external experts.
It’s important that we involve external people because we want to avoid working in our operator ‘bubble’. The views of the outside world matter to us.
I’m really proud of where we’re heading as a business. We’re not perfect, but we’re determined to fill the gaps so we can protect our customers to the best of our abilities.
We have a solid Safer Gambling plan. This website is designed to give us a platform to share some of what we do, and give customers help and advice on how to gamble safely.
Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy the site.
Ben