The United Kingdom Gambling Commission is reportedly set to require all licensed online casino and sportsbetting operators to sign up to the Gamstop self-exclusion system.

According to a Sunday report from The Guardian newspaper, Gamstop was developed by the Remote Gambling Association and allows punters to voluntarily sign up to a service that prevents them from accessing online gambling websites for up to five years. Launched in January of 2018, this free-to-use innovation is being supported by almost 99% of locally-licensed iGaming operators after already having been utilized by tens of thousands of British consumers.

Wider push:

As part of a broader push to counter a rise in problem gambling, the newspaper reported that the Commission is additionally due to make all future online casino and sportsbetting licenses subject to the integration of Gamstop This campaign has also purportedly encompassed a drop in the maximum stake for the nation’s popular estate of fixed-odds betting terminals (FOBTs) as well as a proposed ban on the use of credit cards to fund online gambling.

Early problems:

The Guardian reported that the Gambling Commission’s move comes after the regulator became satisfied that Gamstop had rectified some of its most serious teething problems. It detailed that these initial difficulties had included failures by some iGaming operators to synchronize the excluded players list with their promotional programs, which had purportedly resulted in several problem gamblers continuing to receive marketing materials via e-mail.

Official notification:

This particular shortcoming had featured in multiple regulatory rulings against UK-licensed domains including LeoVegas.com and SkyBet.com and had additionally led the Gambling Commission to warn the Remote Gambling Association about the efficacy of the self-exclusion service. In an April letter, the regulator’s Executive Director, Tim Miller, advised the group that he had ‘yet to see proper evidence of the effectiveness’ of Gamstop and that it was ‘unacceptable’ that the scheme did ‘not interact with marketing lists in that way.’