Paul Buck: There is still a lack of quality education around gambling

What are the primary goals of the EPIC Global Solutions in promoting responsible gambling?

EPIC Global Solutions are the leading gambling harm minimisation organisation globally having worked in 32 countries over the near 11 years we have been in existence.

Founded in lived experience, our mission is to take the problem out of gambling. Whilst 97% of people can gamble and stay in control of time, money and cognition, a smaller percentage – but significant number – gamble with negative consequences, some suffering with addictions, which can lead to family, relationship, legal and financial problems.

Our goals are to make sure we are working in the higher risk areas such as professional and collegiate sport and with the gambling industry to prevent unnecessary harm and help create a more sustainable gambling industry in the US, the UK and around the world.

We have a team of over 50 people and nearly 50% of those are people who have suffered gambling-related harm and recovered to now lead in experience and output in this space.

EPIC Global Solutions operates in 32 countries, including the USA, Ireland, and the UK. What differences do you observe in the approach to gambling harm prevention in these countries?

The UK and Europe is a more mature gambling market, similar to Australia and Ireland amongst others. Due to a lack of effective self-regulation until more recently, they are now suffering vice-like regulations and scrutiny from regulators, politicians, newspapers and the public.

In the UK, gambling harm prevention is a mess with a long-delayed white paper and real danger that it will now do more harm than good, with the potential that money currently being made available to impactful gambling harm prevention organisations could be directed elsewhere.

The current proposals around affordability checks could also move people away from the regulated industry and into the clutches of the unregulated black market which so many of my team suffered from. The US is on a similar path. There is a fight for market share and revenue with not enough emphasis on RG.

EPIC are fortunate to be the training provider for six of the top eight operators in the US now and investment is growing, but still not enough emphasis is being put on RG.

To be clear, the US gambling market cannot be sustainable unless RG flows right through the veins of every operator and every transaction. The harm is here and that will lead to similar outcomes as Europe, but on a much bigger scale.

Your company works with many players in the sports industry, including professional leagues. What challenges do you face in educating athletes and teams about the risks associated with gambling? What are the key elements of this program, and what results have been achieved?

EPIC are the only official provider of education on gambling-related harm to the NCAA, and also deliver education to players and staff across the MLB, MLSPA, NFLPA and several leagues across Europe in football, cricket, rugby and horse racing.

We continuously evaluate our programmes and conduct academic research to monitor and show that athletes can be up to six times more likely to suffer from gambling-related harms when compared to the general population.

This can be down to unique triggers such as competitive characters, injuries, non-selection, contracts drawing to an end and much more unique to each sport. Relatability is key to educating athletes.

Within EPIC’s team we have current and former sports professionals and college athletes such as Stevin ‘Hedake’ Smith (1994 ASU points shaving scandal), Jake Sanford (third round New York Yankees pick), Dominic Matteo (ex Liverpool and Leeds Premier League star), Scott Davies (ex EFL footballer) and Marc Williams (ex Wrexham and Wales U21) and Liz Thielen (former leading US women’s boxer) along with many others.

By placing people who have been in their footsteps, it is more relevant and the evaluations we have undertaken over the last six years show incredibly high satisfaction rates amongst a pretty unforgiving audience by reputation.

All our sports contracts are long term and another key element of our team is diversity. Not all sports people and collegiate athletes are white males and we have a diversity within our team that appeals to all leagues, with more and more work being done across women’s sports.

You also collaborate with the education sector, helping children at risk of gambling addiction. What are the most important prevention strategies you apply in schools and universities?

Over the last five years, we have averaged working with over 35,000 young people a year. That goes across private and state schools in the UK and also a long-term official partnership with the NCAA in the USA.

We have just passed the milestone of 70,000 student-athletes across the USA across well over 260 colleges. The important strategy with young people is to make sure the content is engaging, memorable and age appropriate. Our message is never anti-gambling but more precautionary for young people.

Whilst education around alcohol, drugs, stranger danger, bullying, body image and more is widespread, there is still a lack of quality education around gambling and this is a gap that EPIC is leading in plugging.

Looking ahead, what are your plans for development in the context of technological innovations in gambling harm prevention?

EPIC has always prided itself on the platinum face to face education, awareness, training and consultancy, but over the last 12 months we have recognised that the demand for our services is higher than we could meet.

With geographical and language barriers we couldn’t reach everyone that wanted our services, so we are investing heavily in new digital products that will allow anybody in any sector in any country in any language to access our services.

Bespoke digital learning products that we have created for individual clients in recent years have already proved to be popular and we are currently planning the widespread implementation of new digital products to US colleges and conferences, major leagues, sports leagues around the world and also with gambling industry operators in the USA through the Responsible Gambling Operators Association (ROGA).

We expect that this will take EPIC to a new level of product delivery in addition to the impactful work we already do around the world.