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Guidance

Guidance to licensing authorities

The Gambling Commission's guidance for licensing authorities.

Published
1 April 2021

Last updated
1 May 2024 - Changes

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Contents

Proposal 6: Display of net position and time spent

Proposals

We proposed to extend the requirements to display net time and spend to all casino products (excluding peer to peer poker).

Consultation question

To what extent do you agree with the proposal to require elapsed time and net position information for all casino products? Please give your reasons for your answer.

Respondents’ views

Most respondents agreed with the proposal including the majority of respondents representing a gambling business.

Respondents commented as follows:

  • it is useful in slots and would be useful for all games
  • this allows the customer a clear visual prompt of money being won and lost
  • suggestions that the net position should flash or be made more prominent on a periodic basis, such as pop-ups
  • a suggestion of mandatory breaks in play and messages which quantify gambling losses in other forms of expenditure, such as takeaways so that customers think about the value
  • one operator suggested that as live casino games play slower it is normal for customers to play longer sessions and we should not wish to discourage this
  • several supportive comments from operators who state it has been useful for slots customers.

Our position

Casino games (other than slots) have the fastest loss rate associated with any gambling product according to the Patterns of Play data. We also saw from our responses to our recent survey that 28 percent of respondents agreed with the statement that they had recently experienced a ‘binge’ while playing online casino games and 24 percent that they spend more money playing online casino games than they can afford to lose. The reported ‘binge’ figure is similar to the 24 percent our previous survey found when asking a similar question about gambling on slots. This data and the consultation responses from consumers indicate that [significant proportions of] those playing online casino games would benefit from enhanced information about their time and money spent.

There were no substantive reasons given why we should not proceed to introduce this proposed requirement to other casino games as well as support across stakeholders of all types. The idea that displaying elapsed time may discourage longer sessions on live casino games is not a persuasive argument that customers would be unduly affected, time spent gambling and session length is a long-established risk indicator (which is noted in our customer interaction guidance). We saw in our assessment of similar changes made to slots that the proportion of sessions lasting longer than an hour decreased in the period following implementation.

There were comments about how the information (which is already required for slots) would be more useful if it was made more prominent, either periodically or in general. Operators should note this this and consider whether their display of information is as user friendly as possible. If we find that this information has not been as useful to consumers due to the way it is implemented on some websites, we may revisit the wording of the requirement and look to be more prescriptive.

We have decided to introduce the requirement as proposed in the consultation to require elapsed time and net position to be provided for all casino products (excluding peer to peer poker).

Final wording

This requirement will come into force on 17 January 2025.

Applies to: Casino (excluding peer to peer poker).

RTS requirement 2E

All gaming sessions must clearly display a customer’s net position, in the currency of their account or product (for example, pounds sterling, dollar, euro) since the session started.

RTS implementation guidance 2E

Net position is defined as the total of all winnings minus the sum of all losses since the start of the session.

RTS requirement 13C

The elapsed time should be displayed for the duration of the gaming session.

RTS implementation guidance 13C

  1. Time displayed should begin either when the game is opened or once play commences.
  2. Elapsed time should be displayed in seconds, minutes and hours.

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