Promoting and ensuring safer gambling is at the heart of the user experience for all 888 players and is an integral part of 888’s product offering.
888 Holdings wants to become one of the world’s leading online gambling companies — and investing in its responsible gambling (RG) strategy is a vital part of achieving this lofty goal.
The comments were made to Poker Shield as part of a wide-ranging interview focused on 888’s AI-powered RG software called, the Control Centre. The Control Centre sits within the Made to Play Safely gambling pillar of the operator’s Environmental Social Governance (ESG) framework Made for the Future.
“The Control Centre is continually being developed and reflects 888’s wider ambition to go beyond what is merely required by the regulation when it comes to safer gambling and invest in user-friendly safer gambling tools,” said Andrew Anthony, VP of Customer Safety and Due Diligence at 888 Holdings. “We want to be one of the world’s leading online betting and gaming companies, which is a crucial element of our strategy to achieve this.”
The Control Centre gives players power at their fingertips to make informed choices regarding how much time and money they spend on the site. The Control Centre works across all of 888’s brands: 888poker, 888sport, and 888casino. The RG platform first debuted in December 2020 in the UK market.
As of last month, the Control Centre rolled out in the Italian market for the first time. The software is also available for players in Denmark and is currently rolling out in Romania and Spain. The operator has ambitions to cover at least 90% of non-US regulated markets with access to the Control Centre.
Control Centre key features include:
- Deposits, withdrawals, and balances can be toggled between 24-hour, 7-day, and 90-day views — so players have a real-time handle on their gambling activity.
- All activity appears in a dynamic pie chart that is easy to understand.
- Easy to use controls so that players can change deposit limits.
- Take a Break or Self-Exclusion can be accessed via the account restrictions area with just a few clicks.
Anthony reveals that 888 now has a “philosophy built around normalizing customers’ use of safer gambling tools.” In May, 888 announced that a year after launching the Control Centre in the UK market, it saw an increase of players using responsible gambling tools on its site go up by 23%.
This new philosophy — cynically — comes after the UK Gaming Commission (UKGC) found 888 guilty of severe breaches in the operator’s responsible gambling offering, resulting in a £9.4 million fine, levied against the company earlier this year.
888’s wider ambition [is] to go beyond what is merely required by the regulation when it comes to safer gambling and invest in user-friendly safer gambling tools
The UKGC announced 888 would “undergo extensive independent auditing” and intimated that if it broke responsible gambling guidelines again, the UKGC would pull 888’s license in the dot-com market.
It is, therefore, no surprise that 888 is bolstering its RG offering to become best-in-class so that it can confidently move on from its past transgressions.
“Promoting and ensuring safer gambling is at the heart of the user experience for all 888 players and is an integral part of 888’s product offering,” Anthony added.
Interestingly, in a new research paper on the effectiveness of responsible gambling tools issued by the Responsible Gambling Council (RGC) — normalizing the use of RG tools is a core part of their findings — echoing sentiments made by Anthony in his interview with Poker Shield.
The report concluded that the online gambling industry needs to create a more diverse set of RG tools tailored to player demographic and behaviors. The RGC also believes that an RG tool set must be consistent across all online gambling operators’ sites so players know which tools do what. Building a “tool positive culture” where there is no stigma attached to using RG tools is also a core finding of the RGC report.
Also within the ESG goals for the company is the commitment to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2030.
