Millions of customers around the world bet with us every year — they like the excitement of having a small flutter and the thrill of winning. Betting and gaming are an enjoyable, sociable and memorable way to spend time; that’s why it continues to be so popular. However, unfortunately, for a small percentage of people, gambling ceases to be entertainment and can cause personal, social, financial and even health problems.

It is our responsibility to help our customers gamble safely and responsibly and reduce the risk of harm and help people who need treatment to get it.

This is why we have developed our safer gambling strategy:

Committed to player safety

As a world leader in betting and gaming, Entain aims to provide a positive experience for all our customers; the key to this is ensuring a safe environment. Our approach to safer gambling is simple: we are committed to player safety.

Safer gambling is rooted in our culture and values, embedded across our organisation. From our Board, through our business and to the customer-facing teams.

We dedicate energy and resources to our commitment to player safety. Our approach to safer gambling varies in the specific context of each market’s challenges and needs, but our ambition is to prevent harm across our global footprint.

Our key principles:

While each market is different, our activity can always be captured by our three key principles:

• Engage
  We engage with regulators, governments, industry and academics to evolve our understanding of safer gambling and to deliver a positive and safe environment for our customers.
• Support
  We communicate with our customers and support them with tools and information to promote safer gambling, while equipping our employees with training to identify and help manage the risk of potential harm.
• Protect
  We protect our customers from risks so that they can have a positive and safe experience using our products.

What is safe play?

The Directorate General for the Regulation of Gambling defines Safe Gambling as the set of aspects of gambling supply and consumption aimed at reducing the risk of risky, problematic, compulsive, or pathological behavior, or minimizing the negative effects it may cause. Safe Gambling consists of the rational and sensible choice of gambling options to prevent it from becoming a problem. Safe Gambling implies an informed and conscious decision on the part of our players with the sole objective of entertainment, while always maintaining control over the time and money they want to spend, and in which the value of what they gamble never exceeds what the individual can afford based on their personal circumstances.

Understanding the problem

In 2019, we announced a multi-million-dollar, five-year project in collaboration with the Division of Addiction at Cambridge Health Alliance, a training center embedded within Harvard Medical School. As part of our commitment to promoting player well-being and fostering a safe gaming environment, we provided the Division of Addiction with anonymized gambling data to conduct extensive research on various topics related to gambling safety. The data included information on various sports betting and gambling products. This comprehensive dataset allowed the Division of Addiction to analyze indicators of problematic gambling behaviors, evaluate the effectiveness of intervention messages, and assess the impact of operators' safer gambling tools. By collaborating on this research, we aimed to contribute to the collective understanding of how to provide safer gambling and continue to improve the effectiveness of player protection measures. The insights gained from analyzing this data allow us to identify patterns, trends, and potential risk factors associated with gambling behavior, which can inform the development of evidence-based interventions and safer gambling strategies.

Mechanisms for detecting risky gambling behavior and actions:

In addition, as part of our safer gambling policy, we have developed mechanisms to detect risky behavior. The aim is to safeguard our customers by minimizing problems before they arise. Where we detect a player at risk, a range of measures will be put in place, up to and including account suspension.

We have developed an automatic system based on specific Markers to be able to identify and study our user’s gaming behavior pattern, this allows the monitoring of such behaviors and develop preventive control measures. This system offers a mechanism for early detection and prevention of advanced problem gambling. 

Based on the information obtained through the above measures, and in application of the regulations on Safer Gambling such as the Royal Decree 176/2023, of March 14, we shall be required to notify users, restrict personal communications for advertising and promotions, and suspend and/or, where appropriate, terminate the contract and closure of the user account.