Online poker is one of the few industries that is doing well during this horrible COVID-19 pandemic. With everyone staying home the last couple months, more people have spent time playing poker on the internet. It makes sense. Naturally, there has also been concern that more opportunity to gamble online during the worldwide lockdowns could lead to a rise in problem gambling. Enter GAMSTOP in the United Kingdom. The government’s online gambling self-exclusion service, GAMSTOP recently issued a report on data it has gathered during the UK’s coronavirus lockdown.
One of the more interesting statistics in the report is that the number of new self-exclusion registrations and extensions has actually decreased during the lockdown. The lockdown began on March 23. In the month before that, GAMSTOP fielded 7,000 new registrations and self-ban extensions. In the month following the lockdown start date, there were 6,700 such instances. It’s not a sizeable decrease on a percentage basis, but perhaps still a bit surprising.
Other numbers are up, though.
GAMSTOP users can self-exclude for six months, one year, or five years. Once they do it, they cannot reverse the decision. They are locked in for the term. Some people, however, still ask GAMSTOP if they can opt-out of self-exclusion early, a request that is always denied. Normally, about 1,000 people try to get their bans lifted every month. During the first two weeks of the lockdown in the UK, there were 400 of these requests per week, about a 60 percent increase. The opt-out requests have slowed down slightly, but at 350 per week, they are still much higher than normal.
When a person’s self-exclusion term ends, GAMSTOP still keeps them on the ban list, but at that point, the user can opt-out at any time. Those opt-out requests have also increased, from 600 in the week before the lockdown to 800 the next week to 700 in the final week of April.
Not everyone has wanted to opt-out. GAMSTOP says that 665 people tack on another six-months of self-exclusion to an existing ban each month. Two-thirds of users signup for the five-year term.
“Our data shows that GAMstop is continuing to provide important support to vulnerable consumers during lockdown and thousands of new users are choosing to exclude themselves from online gambling,” said Fiona Palmer, chief executive of GAMSTOP.
“We offer a free, simple and secure solution to anyone who needs breathing space to address issues with their gambling,” she added. “Once a consumer has registered with us they cannot cancel their self-exclusion prematurely and this gives them time to find specialist help and treatment from charities, the NHS, or use other blocking services to protect themselves.”
Those who register with GAMSTOP must still opt-out of marketing e-mails from online gambling companies and need to make their own arrangements to cash out any gaming funds.
GAMSTOP also excludes people from National Lottery instant-win games, but users must go to their online National Lottery accounts directly to self-exclude from draw-based games.
