Accelerated version of gambling fuels addiction
You would think that someone who founded one of the best-known gambling brands in the world would be encouraging people to gamble. You would think that he would be saying, “More, more, more!” But at least in the case of Paddy Power co-founder Stewart Kenny, you would be wrong.
In a new documentary series in the UK, Kenny says the speed at which people can gamble online is a serious problem. Specifically talking about online slots, Kenny said that the tiny gap between spins can feed into addiction, letting people “repeat the dose” without time to think about what they are doing.
He also said that the bells and whistles of online slots contribute to sucking people in, as do jackpot close calls, implying that those are preprogrammed to make players want to spin again and again. After all, they came close to a jackpot, so who’s to say they won’t hit it next time?
Doesn’t like marketing to young people
Stewart Kenney has been apprehensive about gambling companies’ role in gambling addiction for a long time, even when he was part of the machine. He was once on the board of Flutter Entertainment, the parent company of Paddy Power, but resigned in 2016 “because they refused to do anything meaningful on gambling addiction.”
In a 2021 interview with Raidió Teilifís Éireann, Kenney said, “The internet was the explosion,” in the proliferation of gambling. “In fairness to the industry, we didn’t realize how much it would take over people’s lives.”
He also lamented not being more proactive in trying to implement player protections.
In the documentary, he said that he personally still enjoys gambling, but mostly on dog and horse races, which he believes are less addictive than online casino games. One development that has appalled him in this age of internet sports betting, though, is how gambling companies will push sports bettors to try their hand at casino games, because it is iGaming like slots that are the most profitable for the industry.
“What the bookmakers do is, when you open a betting account at the age of 18 to have a bet, and you’re a kid and you want to have a fiver on your local team, within 48 hours, the bookmakers will try and suck you into the highly addictive online casino by sending you free spins,” Kenny explained.
Some protections have been installed
That doesn’t mean that Kenney wants to get rid of gambling. On the contrary, he feels that people should be allow to bet if they want to, but the government needs to be more hands-on to protect players.
To be certain, the UK government has taken action. In 2021, the Gambling Commission required online gambling operators to impose a minimum of 2.5 seconds between slot spins and banned auto-play. It also prohibited features that ratchet up the intensity of games, like turbo, and stopped allowing games to make it look like a player won when they really lost. To that last point, if a player bet $10, but the spin only produced $5, the screen would still celebrate and say the play “won $5,” when it was really a $5 net loss.
In April, operators will be required to put a cap of £5 per spin for people 25 years old and over and £2 for those under 25.
