The Impact Of Regulation Change On UK Betting

After two or three months of downtime, it looks as if the majority of our favourite sporting events are returning to our screens as the spread of the coronavirus begins to slow – it should be an exciting time for all fans, but those who tend to watch many of these events for the betting opportunities may be met with some barriers as regulation change over the past two years within the UK has begun to make this a little more difficult.

Those who use betting sites within the UK will have no doubt heard of Gamstop – it was an initiative introduced in 2018 with the goal of reducing the number of problem gamblers through a self-inclusion scheme that would prevent would-be betters from participating on registered sites, and whilst at first it wasn’t made mandatory for operators to register with the initiative as of April this year, any UK operator that hadn’t registered would be at risk of losing their gaming license. This change has gone hand in hand with another regulation change as a ban on credit card betting and gambling has also been announced – not to say this is the end of UK betting as these ones don’t participate in gamstop, however it does seem there is a goal for regulation change to make betting difficult.

Fortunately for fans and punters there are plenty of options becoming available despite these changes – many UK operators are starting to register in countries that follow regulation and safety of UK betting but fall outside of the reach of initiatives such as Gamstop and the credit card ban, these operators register in countries such as Malta which are much more relaxed on the gambling restriction and more consumer focused so will typically offer an environment that can suit you for much longer.

There’s currently no information on whether or not this initiative is being considered elsewhere, as it stands it is currently restricted to just the UK and will be unlikely to be instituted elsewhere, but there are similar initiatives being put in place elsewhere. There have also been other challenges to overcome for many operators as the spread of the coronavirus has led to other restrictions being put in place – throughout may this had been the introduction of the ban of advertising through television and radio, although only temporary compared to the other changes however.

Many of these changes put in place are still very recent too, only being introduced within the past few weeks – it’s certain that other alternatives will fall into place as players look for different methods of betting on their favourite sports, because the changes are so recent too it’s difficult to understand the full impact that the changes have had, with an increased number of players using betting and gambling services during the lockdown some numbers may be inflated, a full realisation of how the change has impacted the UK betting and gambling industry will start to become clearer over the coming months as lockdown measures continue to ease and more accurate figures become clear.