UK Gambling Act Review To Begin This Week
This week the UK government is expected to launch the start of the Gambling Act Review, which will be the most comprehensive consultation on gambling since the 2005 revised Gambling Act.
Many believe this latest review will change the way gambling operators will work for over 50 years, not since the former Prime Minister Tony Blair passed laws allowing for major changes in advertising, sponsorship and a liberalisation of gambling will this new review be more important.
Many Members of Parliament on both the government side and the opposition have placed themselves against gambling operators to enable more restrictions to the way the UK public may place a bet or indeed see their favourite gambling company operate.
The Gambling Act Review will take 16 weeks and receive consultations from the general public and many other organisations such as gambling regulators, professionals in addictive gambling and indeed from the general public.
However there are many MPs pushing for restrictions which some operators are expecting to come in irrelevant of the consultation period, these would see the sponsorship of sporting teams be more censored, such as the removal of shirt sponsorship.
Promotional advertising on free spins or games removed or reduced heavily, enabling law to remove advertising during live sporting events (this is currently enforced by operators but is expected to be made law).
It seems that Westminster is again looking to scale back gambling in the UK even though they create tens of thousands of jobs and add billions of pounds to the treasury each year.
There possibly could be a delay to this week’s start of the review given the talks on Brexit but as one gambling consultant told the iGaming Post, “if it’s not this month it will start in early January, there are now too many in Westminster who want this to happen.”
However there is a thought that the Prime Minister and the government are getting tired of the chorus for change for a reform to gambling, as stated it does create thousands of jobs and a huge income to a treasury that in 2021 and beyond will need the much needed finance to recover from the pandemic that has sweeped across the globe.
