Why gambling self-exclusion platform expects increase following the pandemic

GAMSTOP has marked three years of working with Leeds-based data consultancy The Data Shed.

The Harrogate-based organisation saw an increase in the number of people registering to its platform at the beginning of this year.

Katie Reynolds-Jones, head of marketing and communication at GAMSTOP, told The Yorkshire Post: “From the end of December to March we saw a big increase in registrations. In fact we are now at 225,000 registrations.”

She added: “We are still preparing for an increase in registrations because this pandemic is not over. We’re only just seeing people going back into work and furlough stopping.

“It would be fair to say that there will be a growth in the number of people realising that they have spent too much time and money on online gambling during the pandemic.

“I don’t think we have seen that yet properly.”

GAMSTOP started working with The Data Shed in 2018 after it enlisted the help of the Leeds-based firm to help review its then beta platform.

“We’re Yorkshire based, as is The Data Shed so that was quite a key deciding factor for us,” Ms Reynolds-Jones said. “We’d been working with a London-based operation to set up the beta phase so bringing it back into Yorkshire was quite important to us as well.”

Anna Sutton, CEO and co-founder of The Data Shed, says the geographic proximity helped the two organisations build a good understanding of the requirements for the self-exclusion scheme.

The Data Shed has been implementing new developments onto the GAMSTOP platform including facial recognition software.

“It allows people to move through that registration stage a lot faster,” Ms Sutton said. “Anything we can do to remove barriers from people actually registering and getting on to the service, helps improve the conversion rate.”

The Data Shed has also spent the last 12 months replatforming GAMSTOP to a new AWS platform.

Consumers can choose to exclude themselves from all UK-licensed online gambling sites for a period of six months, one year or five years.

Ms Sutton believes that the importance of data has increased for both businesses and individuals following the outbreak of coronavirus.

She said: “It has accelerated the way that businesses are looking to integrate data as part of their day-to-day decision-making processes where they weren’t already doing so.

“It has been a huge accelerant in the importance of data in both public life and private organisations.”

The pandemic has left The Data Shed relatively unscathed, the Leeds-based firm’s CEO said, with the business targeting growth.

Anna Sutton said: “We achieved our numbers for the last financial year, which at the beginning of the pandemic we would have been absolutely gobsmacked if you told us that was going to happen. We’re really pleased to still hit our target numbers for last year.”

She added: “We had 40 people pre-pandemic, we have 60 today with the aim to be up to 100 by March 2023.”

The tech sector is already seeing a shift in recruitment patterns. Firms based in London are circling in the war for talent.

While The Data Shed hasn’t lost any of its team, conversations with would- be new recruits are increasingly featuring talk of offers from companies based outside the region with the option of remote working.

“We’re seeing a lot more conversations around where offers are coming to them from outside the region,” Ms Sutton said.

She added: “There is no way that we are ever going back to five full days in the office with everybody in the office. It is just not going to happen.”

The Data Shed’s policy is to trust its staff to make the decision themselves as to when it’s best for them to work from home and when to come into the office.

Success of self-exclusion scheme

More than eight out of ten, 82 per cent, of consumers have stopped or reduced their gambling since registering with GAMSTOP, according to the first independent evaluation of the online self-exclusion scheme.

The report by research consultancy Sonnet, based on surveys of more than 3,300 users and in-depth interviews, found that 84 per cent felt safer from gambling-related harm and more in control of their gambling after registering with GAMSTOP.

Eight out of ten, 80 per cent, said that the self-exclusion scheme had delivered on their intended outcomes.

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James Mitchinson