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Marketing, bonuses and incentives

Operators typically keep some data about customers and their previous gambling activities for the purpose of marketing, including offering bonuses and other incentives related to the amount that a customer has gambled with the operator. This data may be stored separately from similar data stored in other parts of the operator’s infrastructure.

In the case of equipment which stores information relating to customers’ participation in the gambling and which is used for bonus and reward calculations, we consider only the core system whose principal function is to offer, operate and settle the gamble to be “used in” the provision of facilities for gambling.

We would consider systems used to calculate bonuses or other rewards or incentives which are awarded or determined during the course of a single gambling transaction or session of “play” (whether the activity is betting, gaming or participating in a lottery) to be remote gambling equipment. We would not take the same view of systems that only operate to calculate rewards and incentives based on a customer’s historic play. The latter we would normally regard as an aspect of marketing and not as tantamount to a prize related to specific gambling.

Table 1 provides examples of types of bonus and incentives. In the following examples set out, numbers 1 to 5 are linked to the current gamble or session and equipment which stores or processes the relevant data would therefore be remote gambling (key) equipment. Examples 6 – 13 are not linked to the current gamble or session and only operate to calculate rewards and incentives based on a customer’s historic play.

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Facilities for gambling and remote gambling equipment
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Table one
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