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UK Gambling Commission highlights failures to stop children playing on 18+ pub gaming machines

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Tests on a sample of pubs in England indicate that almost 90% failed to prevent children accessing 18+ gaming machines.

The Gambling Commission has worked with licensing authorities and local police to test compliance with laws in place to protect children from the risks gambling can pose.

Children are not permitted to play Category C gaming machines in pubs. Staff are expected to stop children playing on the machines and there should be clear signage indicating the age restriction.

Announcing the results at the Institute of Licensing National Conference, Helen Rhodes, Programme Director at the Gambling Commission, said: “We are extremely concerned that pubs across England are failing to stop children playing gaming machines designed for adults. We urgently call on the pub sector to take action immediately to enforce the laws in place to protect children and young people.”

“We expect to see significant improvement in further tests and will continue to work with licensing authorities to support any action required against those failing to adhere to the requirements.”

The current failure rate (89%) compares to an average failure rate of 15% to 30% for other age restricted products such as alcohol or tobacco.

The Commission has written to the pub industry today outlining the findings of our work and calling for urgent improvements. The letter can be found below.

 

 

Letter 

Dear Trade Association

Age Verification on Category C (adult only) gaming machines in pubs

In June 2018 the Gambling Commission (the Commission) set out further commitments to protecting children and young people from the dangers of gambling, building on work already underway in this area.

The Commission asked its expert advisers the Responsible Gambling Strategy Board (RGSB) for specific advice on the critical theme of children, young people and gambling. Bringing together existing work and acting on the advice provided by the RGSB, the Commission’s strengthened focus seeks to ensure the right protections are in place to reduce the risk of harm to children and young people.

The Commission called for all those responsible for safeguarding children, to work together with the Commission to address the wide range of issues identified in RGSB’s advice. Amongst the actions identified was the need to address access and exposure to gambling by children and young people.

The Commission has therefore been working in conjunction with licensing authorities across England for the last six months to test the compliance of pubs with the requirement to prevent under 18s playing on Category C machines. These exercises were led by licensing authorities (and trading standards staff) or police officers who had volunteered their resources to work with the Commission.

The interim results are sufficiently concerning that we consider it to be in the public interest to release them immediately. The current failure rate is 89% based on 61 tests. This compares to a pass rate of 70 – 85% for most age restricted products such as alcohol or tobacco. (Source: Serve Legal.)

The pubs tested were a matter for the licensing authority to determine based on their local priorities. The failure rate did not vary significantly between licensing authorities nor between [large] pub companies and independents. The results were uniformly poor.

To summarise the legal position, at s46 of the Gambling Act 2005 (the Act)

(1)   A person commits an offence if he invites, causes or permits a child or young person to gamble.

At s284, a licensing authority may remove the exemption (to make gaming machines available on a licensed premises) if:

            ‘an offence under this Act has been committed on the premises’.

The Commission has published a Code of Practice[1] for gaming machines in clubs and premises with an alcohol licence under s24 of the Act. The Code makes it a condition of the permit that:

‘All gaming machines situated on the premises must be located in a place within the premises so that their use can be supervised, either by staff whose duties include such supervision (including bar or floor staff) or by other means.’

Section 3.1 of the Code sets out good practice in relation to access to gambling by children and young people:

Permit holders should put into effect procedures intended to prevent underage gambling. This should include procedures for:

• checking the age of those who appear underage

• refusing entry to anyone unable to produce an acceptable form of identification.

Permit holders should take all reasonable steps to ensure that all relevant employees understand their responsibilities for preventing underage gambling.’

The Commission, the Local Government Association and the Welsh Local Government Association are very concerned about the findings and the clear risks that they indicate to children and young people’s access to gambling. Further tests will be undertaken over the coming months.

We urgently call the industry and their Trade Associations to take the results as a serious indication of the need to improve matters. We expect that the action taken will be reflected in significant improvements in future test results.

As a part of the Commission’s wider focus on children and young people, we will support licensing authorities in their further actions against operators who fail to meet the conditions of their permits and will also not hesitate to amend the Code of Practice for gaming machines in clubs and pubs if that is proved necessary.

Yours sincerely,

Richard Watson, Executive Director Enforcement


Source: Latest News on European Gaming Media Network

George Miller (Gyorgy Molnar) started his career in content marketing and has started working as an Editor/Content Manager for our company in 2016. George has acquired many experiences when it comes to interviews and newsworthy content becoming Head of Content in 2017. He is responsible for the news being shared on multiple websites that are part of the European Gaming Media Network.

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PA Betting Services and Liderform forge strategic partnership to elevate racing content for Turkish audiences

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PA Betting Services (PABS) are thrilled to announce a groundbreaking partnership with Liderform, the premier specialist racing form publication in Turkey. This multi-year agreement marks a significant milestone in the evolution of international racing, as Liderform integrates PABS’s pre-race stats and tipping from nine prominent racing regions into their own tipping product. The collaboration aims to enhance the quality of international racing coverage, offering Turkish audiences access to top-tier insights and analysis as they engage with racing through approved Tote partners.

With this alliance, Liderform solidifies its commitment to delivering unparalleled racing content to its customers, leveraging PABS’s expertise in pre-race analysis and tipping to augment their existing offerings. By incorporating PABS’s comprehensive data and insights, Liderform seeks to enrich the experience of Turkish racing enthusiasts and foster a deeper engagement with unparalleled insights and analysis across international racing events.

Richard Duncan, Head of Business Development & Strategic Partnerships at PABS, expressed his enthusiasm for the partnership, stating, “This partnership with Liderform presents an opportunity to promote PABS’s pre-race tipping and statistical content, which has a proven track record of success in domestic markets, to new international audiences. We couldn’t be more excited to work with Liderform to enhance their market-leading form products.”

The collaboration between Liderform and PABS represents a strategic alignment of two industry leaders, each renowned for their commitment to excellence in racing content. Murat Akyer, CEO of Liderform, emphasised the significance of the partnership, stating, “The breadth and quality of pre-race international form, stats, and tipping content made PABS the obvious choice to enhance our leading form solution. This collaboration not only enhances Liderform’s position as the leading Turkish provider of racing form solutions but also underscores our dedication to innovation and delivering value to our audience.”

The post PA Betting Services and Liderform forge strategic partnership to elevate racing content for Turkish audiences appeared first on European Gaming Industry News.

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Back in Full Force! Hacksaw Gaming Makes Epic Come Back in Croatia with Hrvatska Lutrija!

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We’re back breaking the boundaries of remote gaming in Croatia! This also marks the start of an exciting new partnership with Hrvatska Lutrija, the national lottery of Croatia.

Star titles Chaos Crew, Wanted Dead or a Wild, Hand of Anubis and RIP City, to name a few, are now available on Hrvatska Lutrija’s online platform (Cro Casino) as of the 16th April. Cro Casino highly values responsible gaming principles, with a focus on top customer support and social responsible gaming principles.

Hacksaw Gaming is thrilled to celebrate this new collaboration, and is adamant that Cro Casino players will be starstruck with the variety of our games, offering multiple themes, features and mechanics that showcase our innovative and dynamic approach to creating the ultimate user experience.

Marcus Cordes, Hacksaw Gaming CEO stated that he is “pleased to welcome Hrvatska Lutrija to our growing list of partners. We’re committed to growing our global presence, and being able to reach more players in Croatia with Cro Casino is just what we need to keep on track!” 

Our partnership with Hrvatska Lutrija marks yet another milestone. Emphasizing responsible gaming principles, Cro Casino aligns perfectly with our commitment to providing an exceptional player experience. All that’s left to say is… “Bok” to our Croatian fans!

The post Back in Full Force! Hacksaw Gaming Makes Epic Come Back in Croatia with Hrvatska Lutrija! appeared first on European Gaming Industry News.

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The untapped potential of SEO in iGaming

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With Filip Podborschi, SEO Strategist at The Unit

From our experience in SEO in igaming, there are a number of areas where we see room for improvement and common mistakes which can be rectified. Let’s take a look at these facets of SEO one by one, with our best tips for how to make sure you can maximise your search ranking and drive more volume to your website.

Keyword strategy

The first thing operators should do in this area is identify the best performing keywords that result in higher search volumes on each post. It’s pages that rank rather than websites, so you need a different search intent on each page, and that increases the list of keywords you’re ranking for.

The way to do this is by checking the search volume, and then implementing the keywords according to SEO best practices, which means having primary and secondary keywords and adjusting repetition accordingly.

The common mistake we see here is that companies don’t go into enough depth when conducting competitive analysis; especially when they’re new to the industry. Identifying what exactly your competitors are doing regarding SEO is harder than it looks, and it’s an area where marketing agencies tend to be quite lazy. They may use some tools which will show the standout competitors by algorithm, but they won’t crawl for long enough to ascertain what services they offer and provide a comparison with their client’s service. You need to find out which sites could be ranking better than you, and why.

We also see issues with the ranking of sites based on the user’s location. For example, you may have a website that ranks well in Canada, and when I as a user based in Romania search for that category, I’m not going to get the same list of results as a user who is based in Canada. The best thing to do is use a VPN to gauge how your websites are ranking and performing with your specific audience in your domestic geographical area.

SEO tags optimisation

With SEO tags, which are essentially the page title and description you see on the search engine results page, the page title has the highest ranking power. Google will first check the page title to get an idea of what the page is about and what searches it is relevant for. It will then check the H1 and the content, and it may look through the H2 as well.

A common issue here is some websites have templated SEO tags, especially for the inner pages, so it’s more of a formula within the code to generate a random structure. It is very obvious they are templated and that the operator doesn’t really care about the length.

The key thing with tags is to make sure your pages have titles that don’t exceed the ideal length. This is a big mistake if you get this wrong, and it is very important to optimise your titles. SEO tags can be optimised around keywords. Once doing so, it is very important to prioritise your main pages. If you have 10 pages as part of the main menu, then you should optimise those, before optimising the inner pages.

Identifying duplicate pages is also important, as well as making sure meta inscriptions include CTAs; those inscriptions don’t impact rankings directly, but they do impact the CTR. You have to do that without being too spammy though, so it’s advisable to avoid words like ‘sale’ or calls to “CLICK HERE NOW”.

Headings

Keywords must be implemented in headings; especially in H1s and H2s. Make sure not to overuse H2s and keep them optimised for content value.

If we structure the ranking power of the elements that are bringing results, we would optimise with the page title first, H1 second, content third and H2s fourth. It is better to have five H2s with three of them being optimised around the same search intent that is highlighted in H1, than it is to have 3/10 optimised around keywords. Too many H2s will just confuse Google about your search intent. You can have similar search intent as with H1s, and also have H3s and H4s to highlight value to the reader.

Interlinking strategy

Interlinking between pages is often missing. I’m not talking about interlinking from the main menu, as every page has the ability for you to go back, but I’m talking about interlinking within content, which Google considers to be much more important, because it cares about the relevancy. Google will consider pages with high-quality content as a higher authority page.

Our advice would be to implement anchor links on both branded and non-branded keywords. You should make sure there is an anchor link to the parent page. For example, domain.com/blog is a parent for domain.com/blog/igaming-seo.

It’s very important to have child pages linking to the parent page, passing authority to the parent page. Having that interlinked structure will pass more authority to that parent page.

To explain that in a little more detail, let’s say you have a sportsbook page with 10 more child pages that reflect a particular set of sports. Having each of those 10 pages optimised so they have some authority and linking them to the parent page would pass authority to that parent page. Parent pages usually have a keyword with higher search volume, and passing as much authority as you can to the child page is very important. Too often websites lack content on child pages.

The future of SEO and experience needed

Going forward, we see AI as one of the most significant developments in SEO. At this point, we are not able to rank user engagement in AI, and it is important to keep yourself updated with how Google is reacting to this.

Google in time may provide additional options if you want to be eligible for a particular set of results in that environment. Keep an eye on what features it will offer and the types of websites. Google may consider implementing specific types of results for betting, such as displaying odds or a comparison of odds from three or four sites at the same time.

With all these issues, it is vital to have the relevant experience on board, particularly when it comes to the skill of conducting very in-depth competitor analysis, and this is something The Unit can provide. Conducting competitor analysis is something we have done across several industries, and not just in igaming. The main strength you can have with SEO is to know your competitors inside out, and those skills can be adjusted based on your needs.

The post The untapped potential of SEO in iGaming appeared first on European Gaming Industry News.

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