UK Gambling Commission CEO, Andrew Rhodes, recently made a speech at the Gambling Commission’s 2022 CEO Briefing on the 25th of November that has heads turning. The CEO of the UK’s gambling regulator has said that it is “not our job” to “make a moral judgement” on player spending.
In this speech, Rhodes said: “I’m not saying these operators are getting everything right and I’m not saying the regulator wants to see people in general spending less on gambling either – our role is to permit gambling as long as it is safe, fair and crime-free, not to make a moral judgment on how much money is spent on gambling. But operators looking to move their customers away from behaviours that present a higher risk to the licensing objectives is something that we are watching with interest.
“Our view, as the regulator, is that these are your choices to make.”
The speech went on to lay out plans for the future of the UK Gambling Commission, including how the regulatory body will operate over the next few years, touching on elements like NFTs ad cryptocurrency, which are gaining traction among online gaming operators.
“I’m not going to dwell today on either products based around online illegal gambling sites or emerging products,” Rhodes said. “The illegal market will always continue to evolve and is difficult to eliminate, so our efforts will increasingly be further upstream to seek to disrupt these illegal sites as much as possible. We cannot condone bad practice in the legitimate market and I think you would all agree with me on that. I think the risks from the so called black market are overstated, but that doesn’t mean I don’t think they exist.”
