Bookmakers told to improve problem gambling tools

Bookmakers have been told they must respond quickly to research that revealed deficiencies in one of their key tools in reducing problem gambling.

PricewaterhouseCoopers was commissioned by the Responsible Gambling Trust to carry out a review of the industry's Player Awareness Systems (PAS), unveiled last year, which track player habits and can be used to intervene if they show signs of problems.

The research covered the first three months of the system's introduction and found that the design of the systems and processes "was a work in progress" and was often found to be "undocumented and manual".