Literally every field of work or entertainment has its dangers. Soldiers struggle with PTSD, construction workers need to be wary of accidents, and some moviegoers may sometimes get a bit too invested into the movie universe (like the shooter who channelled the Joker and killed 12 people). Gamblers, as well, face their own demon lurking over their shoulder every day – gambling addiction. According to this fascinating article from The Independent, more than 500,000 people in the UK alone are struggling with gambling addiction. That’s almost 1% of the entire population of the country! And with online gambling now being literally a click or a tap away, it’s easier and easier for those people to indulge in their addiction. And being dependent on gambling is one of the worst addictions out there – while being addicted to, say, movies or videogames can only be harmful in some very extreme cases, being addicted to gambling often ruins people’s lives. Those afflicted with gambling addiction usually spend most, if not all, of their income on gambling, neglecting necessities such as food or shelter. And, just like most people suffering from addictions, they don’t believe they’re addicted. “I can stop any time, that’s just what I do for fun!”, “True, I’m losing money now, but just you wait till I hit the jackpot!” and “This is the only thing that has meaning for me, so why shouldn’t I enjoy it?” are all very common excuses among those who suffer from gambling addiction. They can’t help themselves, and not everyone has friends or family that will care enough to convince them to go to therapy or manage their finances to ensure that this addiction is curbed. A lot of people who fall into any sort of addiction, be it drugs, alcohol or gambling, do so purely out of loneliness. And with no one around to help them, and when they can’t help themselves, the only ones who can do anything about this issue are the online casinos themselves. So, what do they do to combat this very serious issue? Absolutely nothing.

Don’t get me wrong – every online casino has a link to GamCare or a similar organization on their front page, but do you really believe that’s helping even a little bit? As we mentioned above, people who suffer from addiction rarely, if ever, believe that they’re actually addicted, so do you really think that they’d look at the link and think to themselves “Or, right, I better check that place out”? That’s a very imperfect solution, and in all honesty, the link is only there (and often deliberately indistinguishable from the dozen or so logos in the footer of the page) because it’s demanded by law – the Gambling Commission doesn’t issue a certificate to casinos that don’t have it. I know I’m making it sound almost like online casinos don’t want to prevent gambling addiction… And that’s because they do not. As mentioned in the aforementioned Independent article, as well as in several independent studies, online gambling in the UK is now a £2bn industry, which is positively huge. It’s more money than any of us has seen in our lives combined, and that was back in 2012 – while I don’t have an exact confirmation on this, it really wouldn’t surprise me if we’re chasing £5bn as we go into 2016. How much of that money do you think comes from people who are addicted to gambling? As much as 80%.

The Pareto Principle comes into play here. The principle states that in most cases, 20% of the input creates 80% of the result. The observation first came about when in 1896 Vilfredo Pareto observed that 80% of Italy’s wealth is owned by 20% of the population (an observation that is actually true today for worldwide wealth distribution, with the 20% wealthiest people controlling 82.7% of the wealth). In 2002, Microsoft reported that 80% of the errors and crashes in Windows were caused by only 20% of the reported bugs. Numerous studies have been performed (a lot of which are detailed in the book “The 80/20 Principle”) which prove that the Pareto Principle applies to almost anything in life, especially in business – 80% of all sales come from 20% of the customers; 80% of all complaints come from 20% of all clients, 80% of all work is completed by 20% of all employees, etc etc etc.

So what does the Pareto Principle have to do with gambling? Well, a lot, actually. The vast majority of people who sign up to an online casino don’t actually play all that much. They make a small deposit, play for a little bit (enough to try it out) and then move on to other things. Hell, a lot of them don’t even place a first deposit, which is why welcome bonuses are such a huge thing. If you’ve ever wondered why most casinos only have a huge welcome bonus but little to no bonuses for regular gamblers, this is exactly why – they know that the people who will return and gamble more don’t need the incentive of a bonus in order to make repeated deposits, but the first-timers might need a little push to pay before they inevitably move on to the next thing that catches their interest. Using the Pareto Principle as a general guideline, we can establish that 80% of the gamblers only deposit a handful of time, while the remaining 20% are responsible for 80% of all profits. If you haven’t figured it out by now, most of that core and extremely important 20% demographic suffer from gambling addiction. Casinos physically can’t afford to restrict them because they’d be crippling their profits by as much as 80%, and in an industry that’s so competitive, with dozens of online casinos in the UK alone, that’s akin to suicide.

In a nutshell, online casinos have decided to sacrifice the very lives of as much as 20% of their player base in order to remain afloat. It’s truly a no-win situation – even if those who run online casinos want to help, they have their hands bound by the Pareto Principle. They need gambling addiction in order to survive. It’s a sad reality, and one that we need to accept… But should we? Is there a way to defy the Pareto Principle and still have casinos retain their profits while also fighting gambling addiction? There might be, but it’s definitely going to take a lot of work from a lot of different institutions in order to make it happen. First and foremost, the government needs to put their foot down and prepare a budget for fighting gambling addiction, possibly assisted by several charity organizations that can chip in through the donations they receive. That budget would be used to encourage casinos to implement more drastic anti-addiction measures, such as temporarily banning people who have gambled for too much, or having a live representative contact people to let them know that they’ve been playing for a while. Inevitably this will lead to some losses (probably not as drastic as 80%, but they’d be there), and the fund that would be given to complacent casinos would be used to alleviate the losses somewhat. In addition, casinos should also try to prevent their customers from leaving in any way possible by focusing more on regular bonuses than on welcome bonuses. Give people incentives to keep gambling besides the games themselves. Take a page from the book of the free-to-play videogame market that regularly manages to encourage its players to come back and play more with daily bonuses and promotions. A very good idea is to have a bonus amount of coins that get added to the player’s account every day they place a bet – the more consecutive days they gamble the bigger the amount of coins they get is (with a certain upper limit), but if they miss a day the amount resets. That would not only encourage players to come back every day, but will also limit the amount of time they spend gambling – it’s better to spend a £50 deposit little by little every day and get the maximum amount of coins possible than to blow it all in one day, right?

At the end of the day, gambling addiction still remains one of the biggest issues plaguing the gambling industry, but sadly solving it is going to take a lot of effort, perhaps more than is realistically possible. Still, as the online gambling industry continues to grow, so will gambling addiction, and sooner or later this problem will need to be addressed whether we like it or not. I just hope that the issue doesn’t get out of hand by the time we manage to get around to it. And who knows, maybe soon we’re going to get an online casino that can prove that it can be profitable while also tackling gambling addiction by doing more than just placing an inconspicuous link in the footer. And on the day the Pareto Principle is shattered we’ll be one step closer to solving this problem.

Hello, how is your day going? Hopefully pretty great, since you’ve found the best iGaming blog on the world wide web! Well, okay, that might be a bit of an overstatement, but hey, if you’re looking for online casino news, statistics, articles and overall good stuff, then this is definitely the place to find it! My name is Amelia Grayson (but you can call me Amy if you’re really nice), and I’ve been working in the casino market since before I was old enough even enter some casinos! I’ve always had a knack for math and a really good memory, and I taught myself how to count cards when I was 14 years old (beat that, Kevin Lewis!), though I mostly used that as a party trick to impress my friends. I know you might be thinking something along the lines of “Whaaat, 14, that’s nonsense!”, but trust me, as long as you’ve got a good memory, lots of concentration and the right technique (which I learned from books such as “Beat the Dealer” and “Professional Blackjack”) even a little child could do it. When I was 19 (younger than I’d need to be to even enter a casino in the US) I found myself a job as a croupier in London, though half of my job was using my card counting skills in order to catch other people trying to do the same. That’s where I met my future husband Richard, who was a consultant for the casino, and let’s just say it was love at first sight, or about as close to it as you can get in the real world. One thing led to another, and a few years later we decided to quit our jobs and found ADADA, an association to encourage the development of the UK iGaming market (though recently our efforts have been focused more in diversifying it).

Without going into too much detail about ADADA (you can learn more on the main site if you’re so inclined), let’s just say it was a rather astounding success. Our advice, consultations, connections and even an entire event have helped launch not just one or two online casinos, with several more brewing in the background (launching a site like that, after all, takes months at best, maybe even years). But we decided that we wanted to go a step further than that. We wanted to help everyone interested in iGaming – those who wanted to invest in it, those running it and those enjoying it. But obviously we didn’t have the physical time or opportunity to just talk to everyone, so instead we decided to create our own blog where we would write articles that we believe could be useful to anyone in the iGaming market. Both Richard and I will try to post as often as our schedule allows, and we will try and make sure that the content we provide you with is worthy of your attention. We hope you enjoy our blog!

-Amy