Global online poker operator 888poker will introduce an eight-step program to further improve the responsible gaming efforts. This was confirmed by the company’s senior leadership team in the corporate presentation on May 1.
The initiative showcases the efforts of the operator to take responsibility and protect vulnerable customers. They have come up with eight different core aspects in order to ensure that and the first one includes the commitment to change within their business.
As part of the culture of responsibility, it is the goal of “creating aculture of responsibility that ensures safer gambling and transparency is a priority for everyone in our business.” This goes hand in hand with the prevention of harm, which 888 outlines as the next priority.
In order to achieve that goal, the online poker operator plans to engage in collaborations “with relevant stakeholders to develop a shared knowledge base and stronger overall standards for safer gambling”. Such partnerships already exist especially in the sports betting industry in regulated markets and have produced some of the most throrough responsible gaming programs.
Likewise, the “continuous investment in programmes of Research, Education and Treatment (RET) to address gambling harm” has been identified as vital step towards safer gambling. 888 was one of the five operators that participated in the full Revealing Reality project in 2019 and 2020, which aimed to provide clear industry guidelines to prevent problem gambling.
In order to ensure transparency, the fifth outlined pledge by the operators, it wants to enable customers to “have transparency about their gambling activity, with quick, simple and intuitive ways to monitor their activity in real time.” 888 launched their brand new control centre to display all key details in November 2020. The customer-focused interface allows all patrons to monitor their gambling activity through intuitively presented data in real-time.
The operator also provides advanced safer gambling tools which allow the customers to stay in control at all times. Among the available tools are the option to block certain games or products, placing restrictions on the acvitity via self-exclusion, opting out of receiving marketing materials, and the setting of deposit limits, among other measures.
The penultimate principle is called responsible attitudes and contains the providing of “information, education and encouragement to our players to gamble safely”. This essentially boils down to signs of gambling addiction and how to combat them, where to find help and ultimately avoid further harm. 888 already has a dedicated and specialized team in place for safe gambling interactions.
As final commitment, 888 confirms a long-term vision to “continuous improvement, building a deeper understanding about the causes and markers of harm, and using this to drive continued positive change.”
In an exclusive interview with Poker Industry PRO in November 2020, 888 Holding’s VP of Marketing and Head of 888poker Elad Nir confirmed that the company takes advantage of responsible gambling systems which use AI “to help protect players and ensure fairness. We are constantly refining the algorithms used in this system to help detect player activity that might require any intervention.”
With the pledge to take responsible gambling at the heart of the business, 888 have joined the ranks of leading operators to go beyond the measures currently considered as standard in the online poker industry. The company presentation included non-executive chairman Lord Jon Mendelsohn, CEO Itai Pazner, CFO Yariv Dafna, and CSO Vaughan Lewis at the helm of the eight-part initiative on safer gambling.
