Is Ireland’s gambling bill clover before it’s begun? 🍀

Ambiguous regulations provoke ire

First up in this week’s hot copy is a trip to the Emerald Isle, as The Irish Times reports that “unclear gambling laws could flood courts with legal challenges.”

The article is laden with commentary from industry analysts at Regulus Partners, who have identified several “serious drafting issues” with the Gambling Regulation Bill currently being discussed in Ireland’s parliament. According to Regulus, ambiguities in certain areas of the bill could open Ireland up to the same kinds of litigation currently being pursued in other European markets such as Germany.

There, more than 100 separate actions are currently pending against operators, while unclear legislation has also led to court cases in a further 12 European countries.

The frequency of legal actions like those is now accelerating, Regulus said.

For Ireland, of particular concern is legislation around “maximum payments and winnings,” which Regulus said would likely be confusing in practice.

Further, it said that the proposed advertising restrictions remained unclear, with the results of a proposed ban on gambling ads between 5.30am and 9pm still not fully understood.

“In a decade’s time, the drafting is likely to look extremely archaic, in our view, meaning it is not fit for purpose now,” Regulus said. 

One of its analysis reports noted that aspects of the legislation involving banning gambling inducements to customers “is the sentence that potentially destroys the bill if left unchanged.”

The report suggests that as gambling customers are quite accustomed to receiving inducements, “it is reasonable to assume that if existing customers suddenly stopped receiving the inducements that they had become used to, they would use the internet to start looking for them.”

A lack of clarity around these key areas, and others, could be “very dangerous,” according to Regulus, bringing with it the potential to drive ever more customers towards the unregulated offshore market.

With plenty of evidence from regulated jursidictions to draw from, Ireland’s government should be able to develop the robust regulatory framework it’s looking for.

But, until all the details are ironed out, this debate could end up taking longer than anyone expects.

Live and direct

Into the world of online casino now, as Bonus.com brings us a report on the levels of risk associated with different types of gambling products.

While slots are widely known to be the product most associated with gambling-related harm, the piece suggests that live casino may be following behind at a not-too-distant second.

Using data from researchers in the UK and Australia, in collaboration with Kindred Group, the article sets out the different levels of risk associated with a variety of online gambling products.

In order to assess those levels, the researchers correlated different game types with six different behaviours each considered to be markers of gambling-related harm.

They included gambling at unusual hours, removing or easing responsible gambling restrictions and depositing additional funds mid-session, among others.

Researchers used the Spearman correlation coefficient to measure the connection between types of gambling and markers of harm. According to the article, a value of 0.0 would indicate no connection at all.

Conversely, a value of 1.0 would mean that every gambler using a product exhibited the behaviour at a higher rate than an equivalent gambler not using that product.

Across all six of the markers used, the strongest correlation found was with online slots, which had an average coefficient of 0.34.

The rapid frequency of spins in slot games is thought to increase the likelihood of chasing losses and impulsive decision-making, while increasing the cost of play per hour, the article explains. Meanwhile, some live casino games came close to the coefficient figure for slots, with live games demonstrating “considerably higher risk correlation” than their RNG equivalents.

Live dealer roulette, for example, carried a coefficient of 0.2, with other live dealer games (excluding blackjack) averaging slightly higher at 0.21.

Compare those figures to RNG roulette, for example, with its coefficient of just 0.1, and the difference a live dealer can make becomes blindingly obvious.

Readers are encouraged to access the article to view the full list, and find out the different risk profiles of a whole host of different kinds of online games.

Recession? What recession?

Next up, a letter from New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, who this week channeled his inner Ashton Kutcher to ask “Dude, where’s my recession?”

In the letter, Krugman suggests that despite widespread predictions of a recession dominating headlines over the past year, none has been forthcoming among the slew of economic challenges being faced by individuals and businesses alike.

Almost a year ago, he reminds us, the Bureau of Economic Analysis announced that the US’ real GDP had declined over the previous two consecutive quarters.

This, he said, “is widely, although incorrectly, described as the official definition of a recession.”

Alongside that news came the doomsday predictions: members of the Federal Reserve began predicting an unemployment rate of 4.6% by the end of the year, implying at least a mild recession.

But as of yet, no such stats have materialised. Unemployment in the US was just 3.6% in June (the same as it was a year ago), while job growth is “still chugging away.”

“The economy would have to fall off a steep cliff very soon to make them right, and there’s little hint in the data of that happening,” Krugman wrote.

He suggested that one reason economists may have got this call wrong is that, well, they almost always do.

A study carried out previously by the IMF, into the ability of economists to predict recessions, “basically found that they never succeed,” he said.

Still, there’s no smoke without fire, and Krugman goes on to look for reasons why, in the face of so much “unwarranted pessimism,” there’s still no real sign of a recession on the horizon.

He offers up a varied list of reasons, from common misunderstandings of economic data to the increased demand for housing as a result of the Covid pandemic.

Overall, he thinks, the misconception came from the fact that “most economists bought into the view that we were seeing a replay of the early 1980s.

“What happened then was that, faced with high inflation, the Fed sharply hiked interest rates, causing a recession; this recession brought inflation down, and the Fed then reversed course, cutting rates again.”

But, he points out, what’s happening today is not playing out in quite the same way as what was seen in the ‘80s.

“In any case, something really strange has happened,” Krugman concludes. “I can’t think of another example in which there was such a universal consensus that recession was imminent, yet the predicted recession failed to arrive.”

It seems economists will need to dust off their crystal balls a little more carefully before making any more big predictions.

𝘏𝘰𝘵 𝘊𝘰𝘱𝘺 𝘪𝘴 𝘱𝘶𝘣𝘭𝘪𝘴𝘩𝘦𝘥 𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘦𝘯𝘥 𝘰𝘧 𝘦𝘢𝘤𝘩 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘸𝘦𝘦𝘬 𝘣𝘺 𝘪𝘎𝘢𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘕𝘌𝘟𝘛. 𝘐𝘵 𝘤𝘰𝘭𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘦𝘦𝘬'𝘴 𝘮𝘰𝘴𝘵 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘭𝘦𝘴 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘨𝘭𝘰𝘣𝘢𝘭 𝘱𝘶𝘣𝘭𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴 𝘴𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘥𝘰𝘯'𝘵 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘵𝘰! 

𝘗𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘦 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘴𝘶𝘣𝘴𝘤𝘳𝘪𝘣𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘬𝘦𝘦𝘱 𝘶𝘱 𝘵𝘰 𝘥𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘩𝘰𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘴𝘵 𝘤𝘰𝘱𝘺 𝘪𝘯 𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘪𝘯𝘥𝘶𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘺, 𝘰𝘳 𝘴𝘪𝘮𝘱𝘭𝘺 𝘷𝘪𝘴𝘪𝘵 𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘸𝘦𝘣𝘴𝘪𝘵𝘦.