UKGC consent regulations are fast approaching – are you ready?

In the ever-evolving landscape of the UK gambling industry, regulatory changes are frequent. The recent UKGC White Paper ‘High Stakes: Gambling Reform for the Digital Age’ proposes ‘Tougher restrictions on bonuses and direct Marketing’, which signals imminent shifts in consent preferences.  

What this means for Gambling Operators

Operators will soon need to provide players with the opportunity to opt-in and out of all forms of communication, set specific controls regarding which products they receive offers on, and ensure that promotional offers and bonuses are distinctly separate from other Marketing. Importantly, there will be no ‘cross-selling’ without specific user opt-in.

This means operators need to design, apply, and manage these changes quickly.

Strategic Considerations in response to regulatory shifts

With our direct experience of working in the industry, we understand first-hand the pressure that comes with reassessing consent preferences and ensuring compliance within a tight timeframe.

There are many considerations when undergoing these types of changes. Operators will need to:

• Apply the right technical solutions quickly and accurately
• Consider ongoing data management
• Redesign customer journeys to optimise consent capture  
• Evolve Marketing strategies to prohibit cross-selling to players without opt-in
• Design and implement new contact strategies for the post-regulatory landscape, to maintain customer engagement and retention
• Align internal teams and key stakeholders throughout to ensure effective delivery, compliance and measurement

Loop Horizon’s Tailored Support

With extensive client-side experience within the gambling industry, coupled with a proven track record of supporting broader regulated industry clients in managing consent and marketing permissions, our team can provide comprehensive support, tailored to your needs.

We can help you across these critical areas:

1. Internal Alignment & Team Upskilling:  Leading and coordinating internal cross-functional stakeholders, ensuring effective decision-making and providing necessary translation and upskilling to wider teams ‍
2. Accelerated Solution Design: Guiding you on the most appropriate technical solutions and ensuring quality data management within your platforms ‍
3. Consent Journeys & Customer Experience: Crafting compelling value propositions, designing re-consent approaches and ensuring transparent player communications ‍
4. Effective Player Contact Strategies: Managing impact through measurement and the application of strategies to maximise engagement through optimised channels and player preferences following the regulatory change  ‍
5. Delivery & Implementation Support: Providing surge resources for tech and data solutions, minimising team disruption, and ensuring focused programme management

Avoiding Pitfalls and Seizing the Opportunities

Drawing from our own experiences, we can support in navigating some of the common pitfalls:  

• Underestimating the technical complexity and time required of implementing specific consent requirements
• Ineffective decision-making caused by conflicting internal priorities and success metrics  
• Bombarding customers with too much choice and not considering the CX upfront
• Failing to consider the impacts of internal and front-line teams with inefficient translation of regulations  
• Urgency to be compliant and leaving the player communications last
• Not preparing for the potential impact until it’s happened, both in terms of measurement and updated player communication strategies

However, beyond this lies opportunities that these changes can bring.  

With the right approach and an effective contact strategy in place to derive value from players in the post-regulatory landscape, there can be benefits for both operators and players.

With a deeper understanding of player preferences, gambling operators can craft messaging that genuinely resonates with their players’ interests. This knowledge enables the development of more relevant customer journeys.

Tailoring communications to players’ specific product preferences foster a stronger connection with the operator, which ultimately should enhance both customer engagement and retention.  

Expertise you can trust

We have significant experience in successfully applying regulatory change through direct client-side industry experience, as well as broader applications to other industries.

Industry experience:

As the former Head of Marketing at Gamesys, Rachel Fox brings extensive experience in applying GDPR and UKGC regulations to Marketing strategy and customer experience across multiple brands.

As a contributor to the UKGC Operator Research panel, she possesses expertise in understanding and translating regulatory requirements to internal stakeholders. Thus, playing a key role in aligning and leading strategy across legal, compliance, product, data, tech and programme teams. Rachel has extensive experience in customer data management, CRM tooling integrations, pre- and post-contact strategies, team upskilling and impact measurement.  

As the former Retention and Player Comms Manager at Gamesys, Michaela Gotts is well experienced in VIP management and player communications. She managed comms strategies for high value customers, applying an understanding of player journeys and customer experience enhancements.  

Previously responsible for the application of the High Value Customer and Affordability regulations to the account managed base, Michaela has expertise in crafting effective player communications and maintaining a trusted player relationship throughout regulatory change.

Extended Regulatory experience:

Beyond the Gambling industry, our full team of specialists have extensive experience in supporting a range of clients to effectively apply regulatory requirements. This extends across business and legal alignment (LIA, GDPR and PII), consent positioning and value exchange, consent and preference management solution design and implementation.  

This combination of real-world experience across marketing, technology and regulation allows us to support operators with their specific needs, and to not only achieve compliance but manage the balance with customer experience and value too.

To find out more about how we can help you navigate this regulatory change, get in touch today