Strategic focus 1: Using data and analytics to make gambling regulation more effective
Regulation must keep pace with industry and societal developments. Identifying and investing in technology and improvements in data analytics will ensure regulation remains fit for purpose. How gambling is offered is increasing in complexity and sophistication. We need to understand developments in data usage among licensees to regulate the market effectively.
Improving data capacity and capability
We will: Continue to invest in developing our approach to using data analytics to make gambling regulation more effective. This will focus on our skills, governance, data culture and technical infrastructure.
Why: We need to access the right data and be able to use it safely and ethically, underpinned by the right governance and technical infrastructure. Developing a roadmap will help us take a cost-effective approach to building data capacity and identify where actions can be taken to mitigate risk. The roadmap will identify where actions can help us manage regulatory or legal compliance.
As a result: We will have a clear plan to support the building of our data analytical capacity – helping us to co-ordinate our work across different teams.
And the impact for our stakeholders will be: Regulation will be made more effective as a result of a wider range of data, that is safely and appropriately managed, underpinning our policy and operational work.
Regular feed of operator core data (ROCD) project
We will: Deliver Phase 2 of the ROCD project. By the end of this year we will have scaled up the number of participating licensees and considered options to increase the scope of the data specification.
Why: This data source will allow the Commission to develop policy more effectively, better evaluate the impact of our regulation and build a better understanding of the market we regulate.
As a result: We will be able to continue our work to build a data model that will enable us to use data analytics to deliver proportionate and well-focused regulation. Having a better understanding of our impact and how consumers engage with gambling is essential to this.
And the impact for our stakeholders will be: As data is obtained from more operators, stakeholders will benefit from better insights into the impact of our regulation as a result of more robust evaluation and up to date market insight data.
Open Banking Data Science Partnership
We will: Continue our collaboration with Warwick Business School to develop how we use open banking data to inform our understanding of consumer behaviour and gambling harms. We will analyse data obtained through a weekly feed of open banking data, carry out surveys with consumers, and explore operational and policy uses for this dataset. The early phase of this work has already delivered significant insights into how consumers interact between multiple operators and has given a much more granular view of consumer spend and behaviours.
Why: Open banking data provides a unique opportunity to understand consumer behaviour across different gambling accounts and in the context of wider spend. It is part of our ambitions for building an approach to data analytics to give us the best possible insights to inform our work. The 2023 Gambling Act Review (GAR) White Paper has generated multiple policy workstreams, many of which will require further evidence and evaluation resources.
As a result: The Commission will be able to fill gaps in the evidence base about how consumers gamble and how this can lead to harm for some. There will be benefits in terms of the evidence base for policy development and evaluation of policy implementation. We will also publish academic papers to contribute to the wider literature through this innovative research methodology.
And the impact for our stakeholders will be: Greater confidence in regulation, as a result of new insights into how consumers gamble across multiple operators.
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Strategic focus 2: Enhancing our core operational functions
Last updated: 7 April 2025
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