Flutter Gambling

Responsible Gambling (“RG”) for Flutter is fundamental to every element of the Group’s strategy. Across our global business we provide an entertaining betting experience to over 13 million customers and our priority is ensuring that during their visits to our sites.

Responsible Gambling (“RG”) for Flutter is fundamental to every element of the Group’s strategy.

Across our global business we provide an entertaining betting experience to over 13 million customers and our priority is ensuring that during their visits to our sites and shops they can stay in control and only bet what they can afford. However, we recognise that for a small minority of customers, gambling stops being fun, and they are at risk of harm.

1. Flutter recently expanded its business by closing a multi-billion merger with fellow multi-brand gambling operator The Stars Group. The tie-up created one of the largest gambling companies in the world with presence in all key regulated jurisdictions and ambitious plans for further expansion.
2. Flutter was formed in 2016 out of a merger between bookmaker Paddy Power and online gambling group Betfair. The new company acquired Canada’s The Stars Group in 2019, with the.

All markets have their own regulation and societal context, and we apply our principles in that context with the ultimate objective of building a sustainable and responsible business in each market.

The detail in this section pre-dates our merger with The Stars Group and relates to the pre-merger Flutter business. It will be updated soon with inforrmation from across the new Group. In the meantime, information about RG in the former TSG businesses can be found here.

1) We build our business on customers having fun, and harmful play has no place

To ensure that all our customers gamble responsibly, we have robust and wideranging policies on RG and routinely engage with customers we think might be at risk. The tools we have in place range from deposit and loss limits to full selfexclusion protocols and we endeavour to make these processes as seamless and easy to use as possible. We continually assess and evolve these processes to ensure we are doing everything possible to protect our customers.

Every customer is different, and we know that not all customers will choose to proactively use our tools, so we also actively monitor our customer base using our Customer Activity and Awareness Programme (“CAAP”). CAAP is our proprietary machine learning model which uses an algorithm to identify customers who may need intervention, based on their behaviour.

This year we enhanced the model to analyse over 100 customer behaviours daily and assign risk scores to each active customer. Proactive interventions regularly take place off the back of these scores which greatly increases our capabilities to identify at risk customers early in the lifecycle and intervene before gambling becomes a problem for them.

2) We educate our customers and staff about responsible play

This isn’t a dry, faceless process. We have real people trained to call and email customers every day to intervene when we see they may be at risk of gambling related harm. Our specialist RG team make over 90,000 monthly RG awareness interactions across our Paddy Power and Betfair brands, and around 1,200 customer interaction calls per month.

We have recently rolled out CAAP 2.0 to our Sportsbet customers in Australia and are developing a model for our US business. Where we are concerned about customers we will not market to them. We have invested significantly to ensure protecting our customers is a key priority by refreshing and targeting our staff training around RG.

3) We have to talk, share and work with others to keep innovating in responsible gambling

An important part of our ongoing RG strategy is aimed at establishing the Group as one of the progressive voices in the industry and striving to raise the standards for our customers and stakeholders. We work with trade associations in all of our regulated markets, all of which have played an important role in establishing progressive, constructive self-regulation that enhances customer protection.

We made further significant steps towards driving the industry forward in 2019 by working with several leading operators in the UK to introduce industry Safer Gambling Commitments, a comprehensive set of measures devised to support the UK Gambling Commission’s National Strategy to Reduce Gambling Harm.

The five core Safer Gambling Commitments:

• prevent underage gambling and protect young people
• increase support for treatment of gambling harm
• strengthen and expand codes of practice for advertising and marketing
• protect and empower our customers
• promote a culture of safer gambling

To ensure that these commitments are delivered with the transparency and authenticity they are intended, we form part of an industry working group with other operators under the Betting and Gaming Council (‘BGC’) and will regularly report publicly on progress of these commitments.

4) We invest in always getting better at tackling the problem

In the UK we continue to drive collaboration across the industry through our membership of the newly formed Betting and Gaming Council (“BGC”). We made further progress in our RG intentions including:

• Research, treatment and education
  • Our UK business continued to invest in RG. During 2019 we donated 0.1% of our UK Gross Gambling Yield to the research, education and treatment of problem gambling as encouraged by the Gambling Commission, and we would welcome the introduction of a levy to ensure all UK licensed operators do the same.
  • In June 2019 we announced, along with the other big five operators, that we would raise our current 0.1% voluntary contribution of Gross Gambling Yield over the next four years to 1% in 2023 for the research, education and treatment of problem gambling. This tenfold increase will reach a contribution of approximately £60 million, a level which we intend to maintain in the future and we hope that the wider industry will follow suit.
• Whistle-to-whistle advertising ban
  • In September 2019 the gambling industry followed through with its agreement to ban all pre-watershed gambling advertising during televised live sport in the UK. It is vital that we market responsibly and hope these restrictions have gone some way to address understandable concerns about the proliferation of advertising.
• Responsible gambling week
  • We participated in the now annual joint UK and Ireland Responsible Gambling Week, collating activities across all online and retail gambling outlets across both countries. The week sees all retail and marketing changed to responsible gambling messaging as well as being displayed on site and all social media platforms. This year our Paddy Power brand used their marketing assets to create videos with ambassadors Ruby Walsh, Matt Chapman, Lizzie Kelly and Mick Fitzgerald in order to land the RG message in a way that would resonate with our audience. Events are set up internally for staff in our corporate offices to learn from problem gambling charities we support to make employees aware of how to spot possible signs of problem gambling but also to encourage everyone to consider how else we can improve our processes so that we can further protect our customers.
• Responsible gambling charities
  • During 2019, we further supported the Government’s nominated charity GambleAware, as well as committing to a four-year funding plan through our Safer Gambling Commitments for the Young Gamblers Education Trust which aims to inform, educate and safeguard young people against problem gambling. In Ireland we are proud to have been a strong and leading advocate for the establishment of the Gambling Awareness Trust – an independent charity set up to fund research, education and treatment services to help minimise gambling related harm in Ireland. This initiative represents a significant increase in the amount of funding available to support organisations in Ireland.

In the newly created role, which reports into chief people officer Caroline Ross, McCaw has been tasked with developing and executing Flutter’s inclusion and diversity strategy.

He will work with the board, business leaders and his colleagues in human resources to devise training and development opportunities for all colleagues. He will also chair the Inclusion and Diversity Committee to monitor and report on progress towards its objectives.

“Stepping into this newly created role is beyond doubt one of the most exciting opportunities I have ever embarked on,” McCaw said.

“Already I’ve seen a willingness and commitment to developing a strong strategy for inclusion and diversity at all levels within this organisation, especially from senior leaders, where it can make a real impact.”

Before taking on his new role, McCaw served as head of inclusion and people engagement for Flutter’s Sky Betting & Gaming subsidiary.

In that role he worked closely with its management to build an inclusion strategy that was commended in the All-in Diversity Project’s All-Index 2019 report last year.

Prior to joining Sky Betting & Gaming, McCaw worked for fashion retailer New Look. As senior HR business partner for the UK and Ireland, he worked with external organisations such as lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights charity Stonewall and the Employers Network for Equality & Inclusion (ENEI) to further diversity and inclusion efforts.

“I’m delighted to welcome Greg to the team,” Flutter’s chief people officer Ross said. “He brings a wealth of experience, which the wider group will benefit from as we continue to shape our inclusion and diversity strategy.

Flutter Gambling Wiki

Flutter Gambling Term

“Our goal is for all colleagues to feel a shared sense of ownership in our business,” Ross continued. “We want to build on our foundations to be a truly inclusive place to work, one where difference is celebrated and valued, because it is only when we all understand the role we play that will we really shift the dial. I’m really excited about what we can achieve together.”