Celebrating the launch of the Betting and Gaming Council

Today, I’m delighted to announce the launch of the Betting and Gaming Council (BGC), a single voice for the industry (excluding lotteries). The BGC comes together with a view to tackling the challenges facing the UK’s betting and gaming industry.

From today, betting shops, online betting and gaming businesses and casinos will be working together, sharing best practice to ensure the highest standards in safer gambling under the BGC.

Today’s announcement marks the start of an exciting journey for the sector, and we’re thrilled that such a diverse group of sector-leading businesses has decided to join – from some of the UK’s largest operators to some of the smallest. Our goal is to champion industry standards in betting and gaming to foster an enjoyable, fair and safe betting and gaming experience for all our customers.

In order to achieve this, the BGC has identified areas where more can be done to promote enjoyable and safe play. Over the next year, you can expect a series of wide-ranging initiatives and announcements – from new technology to help bookmakers identify erratic betting behaviour, to proposals for improving advertising standards and initiatives to educate consumers on the risks associated with betting and gaming.

There are several areas where our industry can be doing more to educate both the public and key decision-makers (and everyone in between) to champion the value of our industry and the people who engage with, work in or are interested in betting and gaming.

We are committed to fostering a close working relationship with government, the Gambling Commission, third sector groups and most importantly our customers to improve standards and build public and institutional trust in the industry.

We believe that this can be achieved by implementing a progressive new code of conduct, which all members must adhere to. Further, we will introduce a range of issue-specific codes of practice, focusing on topics such as advertising, the protection of young people, and staff training which aim to deliver the highest standards across the industry.

We have several new announcements that we will launch in the coming days. If you’d like to be kept up to date with our work moving forward, follow us on Twitter at @BetGameCouncil. I hope that you are as excited as I am about our plans for the coming year.

Chairman, Brigid Simmonds OBE