Latest News
GAMSTOP marks fifth anniversary with parliamentary reception as record numbers chose to self-exclude
- Lords event hosted by peer who first advocated multi-operator self-exclusion
- GAMSTOP has registered more than 380,000 users since its inception in April 2018
- May 2023 was a record month for registrations, eclipsing March 2023
Parliamentarians, regulators, gambling charities operators, and those with lived experience, gathered at Westminster to mark the fifth anniversary of GAMSTOP, the UK’s independent online gambling self-exclusion scheme.
The event on Wednesday June 14th was hosted by Lord Browne of Belmont, who first advocated a national gambling self-exclusion scheme, and former gamblers spoke about the importance of GAMSTOP in helping them overcome their problems.
GAMSTOP was launched in April 2108 and two years later it became a licensing condition for all UK operators to integrate with the scheme, in addition to operating their own self-exclusion schemes. More than 380,000 people have registered with GAMSTOP since its inception, choosing to exclude themselves from all UK operators for a period of either six months, a year or five years.
Last month was GAMSTOP’s busiest ever with a record 8,594 new consumers registering for the free service, 90 more registrations than the previous record in March 2023.
Users interviewed recently by independent research agency, Sonnet, said that GAMSTOP provided an important safety net and self-exclusion was helping their recovery. The House of Lords reception brought together former gamblers, who shared their experiences in a video played to guests.
Stacey Goodwin, from Chesterfield, who is recovering from an eight-year addiction, said:
“GAMSTOP was vital for me in my recovery. I’ve had a lot of comments during my recovery such as ‘you’re so strong’ but I don’t feel that way. The truth is that when I don’t feel in a good place, GAMSTOP is the tool that is strong for me.”
Matt Blanks, who started gambling at 11 and lost around £700,000, said:
“GAMSTOP really is a lifeline not only for me, but for a lot of people struggling with gambling harm. It gives you the chance to stop and reflect and take away the temptation of gambling”.
Jack Scott, who has overcome his gambling addiction to become a successful endurance runner, said:
“GAMSTOP smashed through the roadblock, I was sick of the person I had become. With a tool like GAMSTOP, if it can promote you being the best person of yourself why would you not tick that box?”
Fiona Palmer, CEO of GAMSTOP, told guests:
“We are constantly looking at ways we can improve the experience for our consumers, ensuring that GAMSTOP offers secure and effective exclusion from online gambling for those who have registered. We are also looking at improving consumer journeys both in terms of enabling them to seamlessly exclude from all gambling, not just online, and ensuring that they are signposted effectively to further support and treatment should they want it”.
Speaking at the event, Professor Henrietta Bowden-Jones OBE, National Clinical Advisor on Gambling Harms for the NHS, said the UK was leading the way on self-exclusion and called for further work to be done with land based self-exclusion. She said:
“We are fighting tech with tech. Patients are frustrated by self-exclusion measures because they cannot beat them. Some patients are returning to bookmakers because that’s the only thing left to do. They are using cashback from Tesco to get around bank blocks. There’s an enormous need to block people from going into bookmakers by having a universal scheme for the country”.
Latest News
Vibra Gaming to celebrate Betsul success at SBC Lisbon 2024
Go-to LatAm provider will showcase how its technology and content is powering one of Brazil’s fastest growing betting and gaming brand
Vibra Gaming and its Vibra Solutions platform division will celebrate its success in Brazil at SBC Lisbon on 24th to 26th September by showcasing its partnership with Betsul, one of the country’s fastest-growing brands.
The LatAm region’s ‘go-to’ content and platform developer has partnered with the operator since 2022, just two years after it was founded, including developing a bespoke platform, powering its entire offering, and providing it with localized game-changing content.
The long-standing Vibra-Betsul partnership began when Betsul chose Vibra to develop an advanced platform technology to power its brand. The Vibra Solutions team worked in close partnership with Betsul to assess its needs and began work on a dedicated, flexible and customisable platform that continues to deliver outstanding results today, much of which will be on show at SBC Lisbon.
This was followed by Vibra’s design of a pioneering product for the Brazilian brand entitled ‘Scratch-a-Lot’, a unique instant-win game that was adapted to Federal Government lottery regulations where only certain game types could be offered to players.
Vibra Gaming will also celebrate its recent licensing success at the show following the news that it is set to become one of the first providers to gain certification for its casino platform and sportsbook technology in Brazil.
Vibra has already secured GLI certification needed to meet Brazil’s regulatory standards and is currently working with certifying laboratories to complete additional requirements.
Fernando Garita, CEO, Betsul, said: “Working with Vibra has been a success and we’re delighted with the progress we’ve made since we started. The team is always responsive, speaks our language in more ways than one, is highly experienced, and knows precisely what our players want. All of this combined means we have a technology partner who we can trust and we know will continue to deliver great results.”
Ramiro Atucha, CEO, Vibra Gaming, said: “Betsul has been a great to work with ever since we began two years ago and it’s a real pleasure to be able to shine a light on some of our joint efforts, particularly on the platform side where we’re proud of what we’ve achieved.
“Betsul was one of the first brands to believe in us and what we’re trying to do in designing and delivering a highly flexible and customizable platform for forward-thinking operators, and we’re very grateful for the faith they’ve shown in Vibra.”
Vibra Gaming will exhibit at SBC Lisbon 2024 at stand no. B550. Book a meeting with the team today! Contact: [email protected]
Latest News
ZITROS’ MEGA LOUNGE IS NOW FEATURED AT TRILENIUM CASINO IN ARGENTINA
Zitro, a leading global gaming provider, in partnership with the prestigious Boldt Group, announces the launch of Mega Lounge at the Trilenium Casino, located in the province of Buenos Aires, Argentina. This innovative concept, which has generated great anticipation in the market, offers players a unique communal experience.
In a dedicated area of the casino, Mega Lounge features a variety of Zitro games and cabinets, all interconnected to the MEGA jackpot, which is celebrated by all players participating in the Lounge’s Zitro machines.
Thanks to the number of machines contributing to the jackpot, Mega Lounge ensures a high frequency of jackpot hits, while providing a highly rewarding communal gaming experience for players. Additionally, the diversity of available games, which includes classics like Link King, Link Me, 88 Link, Mighty Hammer, and Energy Link among others, allows the Trilenium Casino to offer its customers—through Zitro’s 30 GLARE cabinets—a wide range of options to suit each player’s preferences.
Jose Pallota, General Manager of Trilenium Casino, Boldt Group, commented: “We are more than satisfied with the excellent performance that Mega Lounge has had at the Trilenium Casino and with the great reception from our customers. We are confident in continuing to work with Zitro to make Trilenium a reference casino for players in Buenos Aires.”
For her part, Alejandra Burato, Regional Director for Latin America at Zitro, commented: “We are very grateful for the trust that the Boldt Group has placed in Zitro once again. From now on, their customers will be able to enjoy the unique experience of the Mega Lounge and our proven performance games. We are confident that this new addition will contribute to the success of the casino, as it has in other markets.”
Industry News
A deep dive into generative AI
Nick McDonald, Account Director at Fujitsu, takes a closer look at the revolutionary technology and says it should not be feared if used in the right way.
The topic of AI is dominating conversations across the industry right now.
Businesses understand that it can have a seismic impact on all aspects of their operations, from internal processes and procedures to the solutions, tools and services they provide to customers.
Of course, that impact can be both positive and negative, and while there has been a lot of hype around the potential of AI concerns have been raised, too.
This has left many organisations – and, indeed, the global markets – a little nervous about AI and unsure how they should approach the technology.
It’s important to understand there are different types of artificial intelligence, with each type having its own use cases. This includes but is not limited to:
- Narrow AI
- General AI
- Super AI
- Reactive machines
- Limited memory
- Theory of mind
- Self aware
The category of AI that most are interested in is Narrow AI and in particular, the Generative AI that sits within this category of artificial intelligence.
But what do we actually mean by Generative AI?
Generative AI – a simple definition:
Generative AI can create new data including texts, images, videos and more. It does this by learning the structure and patterns of its training data to generate new ideas with similar characteristics.
It can be training to understand human language, programming languages, art, chemistry, biology, law and countless other complex subjects.
Large AI models power Generative AI. Often referred to as foundation models, they can perform a wide variety of tasks including summarization, classification and answering queries.
This makes it ideal for things like chatbots, creating media assets, design and product development.
ChatGPT catapulted Generative AI into the mainstream:
ChatGPT is the most well-known example of how Generative AI can be used.
Its rise has been nothing short of meteoric, reaching 100 million users in just two months (Facebook took 54 months to reach the same milestone).
ChatGPT is essentially a chatbot that runs on the foundation of large language models (LLMs), trained on vast amounts of data to produce texts that humans can understand.
Users ask a question and ChatGPT breaks down the query into smaller components to analyse their meaning and to determine what the user is really asking it to do.
It then returns words and sentences it predicts will base answer the query, based on the data it has been trained on.
Generative AI – the risks:
While ChatGPT may seem like a useful tool that, if nothing else, is great fun to use, it also highlights some of the concerns surrounding Generative AI.
This includes the accuracy of the outputs being generated, inconsistent output, bias, a lack of explainability and even threats to security, privacy and intellectual property.
There’s a growing number of examples of people using tools like ChatGPT and finding themselves in hot water but one of my favourites is that of a lawyer who used it to search for legal precedents in a case they were working on.
The lawyer typed their query into ChatGPT – thankfully being smart enough to not include specific information about the case – and it returned information showing that there were legal precedents.
They then instructed ChatGPT to compile the information in a document to submit to the court.
The issue was that the information ChatGPT returned was false, something the judge picked up on after reading the document submitted by the lawyer and undertaking their own research into the legal precedents presented.
When the judge was unable to find any such cases, they put this to the lawyer who came clean about using ChatGPT to search for legal precedents, but then not checking what it returned.
The lawyer was ultimately struck off – the best possible result because had they included information about the case in their ChatGPT search, they would have faced a lengthy prison sentence for breaching confidentially.
This is because ChatGPT is a public service that consumes information as well as shares it.
Don’t fear Generative AI:
But this shouldn’t stop organisations from embracing the power of Generative AI and the clear benefits it can bring to their operations.
From streamlining game development to improving customer support, there are many ways online gambling businesses can harness its potential to drive growth.
The way we have gone about this is to create a chatbot similar to ChatGPT that organisations can use with confidence. It works similarly to ChatGPT but instead of using publicly available data, it sits on top of the company’s data warehouse.
This allows teams and employees to ask questions and queries and have answers generated based on the proprietary data that foundation models have been fed on.
This data can be siloed within the warehouse, with individuals and teams given specific levels of access – the marketing team doesn’t need to be able to ask questions of the same data sets as the CFO and CEO, for example.
The use cases for a Private GPT are endless but include being able to ask any question, chat with company data, find new answers and insights, foster deeper collaboration, jointly generate insight and evaluate results and decision support systems.
Of course, this is just one way that Generative AI can be used but demonstrates how its capabilities can be harnessed safely and without any negative repercussions.
But as the industry gets to grips with the technology, many more will emerge and undoubtedly change the game for all stakeholders.
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