Entain launches its pioneering UK affordability model, raising the bar with personalised player protection
Entain, the leading global sports betting and gaming entertainment operator, is using its pioneering, technology-led player protection initiative known as ARC (Advanced Responsibility and Care) to identify UK customers at greatest risk of potential financial problems and proactively implement staking limits and tighter affordability checks.
With affordability checks now live across Entain’s 14 UK brands, the company is believed to be the first leading UK betting and gaming operator to be rolling out a combination of personalized technology-led player protection, affordability checks and individualized staking limits by the summer 2021.
The move coincides with intense debate in the UK over how best to protect those at risk without limiting the enjoyment of the vast majority. The issue is one of many on which the Government has been taking views in a consultation closing today ahead of legislative reform.
“We have been working on player affordability concepts for the past 18 months as part of our ARC affordability programme. This aims to identify relevant limits at the right time to protect customers whom our technology has identified as being vulnerable, or particularly at risk” said Peter Marcus, Group Operations Director at Entain, who is leading the ARC initiative.
“For those we believe are at most financial risk, we set limits which only increase if those individuals share certain information about their affordability. This means the vast majority of customers who show no indications of financial risk can still bet with us freely,” Mr. Marcus continued. “We think this is an important step in preserving personal freedoms, and will also greatly benefit the horse-racing industry, which is concerned about the impact of blanket measures on its future viability.”
Entain’s affordability framework under ARC uses open source and commercially available data on customers combined with behavioural indicators. Its data scientists have built models for customers demonstrating varying levels of potential financial risk which are now live on affordability across all the company’s 14 UK brands.
“We firmly believe that a more personalised, individual approach to player protection is the way forward which is why, for the most vulnerable customers, we have taken action as soon as we can,” said Jette Nygaard-Andersen, Chief Executive of Entain “we are deeply committed to giving every customer the best experiences and protection we can, tailored to their particular needs.”
Entain is continuing to develop ARC, with further models and behavioural indicators still in development, to include variable stake limits depending on the risk level of the customer. The company said tests have shown that interactions with targeted customers, to use betting and gaming tools, reduce their staking and depositing limits by around 55%.
ARC is due to be fully live in the UK market across all Entain brands from this summer, being customized for specific countries internationally and different cultural norms later in the year.
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About Entain
Entain plc (LSE: ENT) is a FTSE100 company and is one of the world's largest sports-betting and gaming groups, operating both online and in the retail sector. The Group owns a comprehensive portfolio of established brands; Sports Brands include bwin, Coral, Crystalbet, Eurobet, Ladbrokes, Neds and Sportingbet; Gaming Brands include CasinoClub, Foxy Bingo, Gala, Gioco Digitale, partypoker and PartyCasino. The Group owns proprietary technology across all of its core product verticals and in addition to its B2C operations provides services to a number of third-party customers on a B2B basis. The Group has also entered into a joint-venture with MGM Resorts to capitalise on the sports-betting and gaming opportunity in the US. The Group is tax resident in the UK with licenses in more than 20 countries, across five continents. The Group is a leader in on ESG issues, is a member of the Dow Jones Sustainability Index, FTSE4Good and is rated AA by MSCI, the ESG rating agency.
For more information see the Group's website: www.entaingroup.com