Inside Asian Gaming

IAG APR 2022年4月 亞博匯 84 COLUMNISTS gambling – poker card games – was appropriate. Reasonable minds may differ on former Senator Leyonhjelm’s view or prefer cherry picking the Productivity Commission Report, however, the characteristics of online poker including its heightened social interaction, buy-in and skill component, can be distinguished from other forms of gambling, whether land- based or online, that have been more closely associated with gambling harm. Despite this, it is not uncommon for online poker to be corralled amongst online casino games which are spoken about, perhaps conveniently, as a homogenous collective. PROBLEM GAMBLING PREVALENCE Gambling harm is a serious issue and one that has historically not attracted sufficient attention from industry. More recently, innovation and advances in industry practice and culture indicate heartening engagement and growing commitment towards bolstering player protection and improving responsible gambling outcomes. So, while there is more work to do, and we need greater industry participation in public policy discourse, the cultural resistance towards owning responsible gambling outcomes is increasingly giving way to leadership on what the future of safer gambling looks like. It is also relevant to observe that despite intrusive gambling advertising and a surge in the accessibility of online gambling, problem gambling prevalence in NSW has been largely stable over the previous 15 years, as shown by the last three periodic gambling surveys commissioned by the NSW Responsible Gambling Fund. The most recent survey published in 2019 declared problem gambling prevalence had moved from 0.8% to 1% of the population. This change was not deemed statistically significant. The UK Gambling Commission, which is responsible for industry supervision in Great Britain, released statistics on participation and problem gambling for the year to September 2021, which showed that the overall problem gambling rate was statistically stable at 0.4% (year to June 2021) and that the moderate risk rate had decreased significantly to 0.7% (year to June 2021) compared to 1.4% in the year to June 2020. Importantly, gambling data from the Gambling Commission