A question of trust: should the Gambling Commission be allowed to mark its own homework on affordability checks?

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The row over affordability checks has intensified in recent weeks, with the Gambling Commission coming out swinging in response to criticism of its plans to introduce financial risk assessments (FRAs). 

The commission’s pugnacious reaction to legitimate concerns is, however, no way to resolve them. It may instead serve only to undermine what is left of the betting regulator’s moral authority. 

The Gambling Commission is considering the imposition of potentially intrusive checks on bettors wishing to spend more than £2,000 over a 90-day period (i.e. £22.22 a day). Widespread criticism of its policy has left the market regulator looking increasingly isolated. 

Rather than reflecting on why so many parties within racing and betting are so concerned about the impact of FRAs (and the wider issue of affordability checks), the commission has chosen to belittle their fears – repeatedly describing them as "ill-informed or inaccurate". 

The commission has not specified who it considered to be ill-informed. The barb might have been aimed at the 408 leading figures from across racing who signed an open letter to culture secretary Lisa Nandy; The Sun newspaper with its Save Our Bets campaign; the Racing Post; or perhaps even the Social Market Foundation, which recently admitted to having second thoughts about affordability checks.

If there is confusion about the hoops through which bettors are required to jump in order to spend their own money, the Gambling Commission is at least partly to blame. By way of illustration, its website offers the following contradictory opinions:

“Customers wishing to spend more than the national average should be asked to provide information to support a higher affordability trigger such as three months’ payslips, P60s, tax returns or bank statements . . .”  (Gambling Commission Compliance and Enforcement report 2019 to 2020) 

“In 2026 it can’t be right that [regulatory compliance] still leads to some operators asking consumers to share bank statements and other financial documentation.” (Gambling Commission executive director Tim Miller's speech to the Ethical Gambling Forum, April 2026) 

Is it any wonder that bookmakers are confused? The truth the commission seems unwilling to admit is that licensed operators, forced to navigate a bewildering array of compliance trip wires (including a definition of vulnerability designed to capture most adults in Britain), routinely ask for documents because that is what they have been explicitly encouraged to do. 

There is a Trumpian quality about the commission’s attempts to blame the controversy on the misinformation of others, while failing to acknowledge its own missteps. 

Gambling Commission: has developed a habit of blaming controversy on the misinformation of others

For more than three years, between 2021 and 2024, the commission refused to release survey data on the attitudes of bettors towards affordability checks (captured as part of its 2020-21 public consultation). When the survey results were finally released in April 2024 (too late to influence the Gambling Act Review), they revealed widespread and deep-seated opposition to checks, with only 14 per cent of respondents reporting they would be willing to comply. 

Nearly a quarter said they would switch their betting to providers that did not require such checks (such as unlicensed sites). Despite this, the commission has repeatedly sought to downplay the risk that over-regulation of the licensed betting market – and affordability checks in particular – fuels the growth of the unlicensed market.

A More in Common poll published in January revealed just one in three adults in Britain trusts the Gambling Commission to regulate the betting market properly – and faith is likely to be much lower in racing and betting circles. 

Over the course of the last five years, the regulator has funnelled millions of pounds into anti-gambling activism (for example through grants to Gambling with Lives), published unreliable harms data from its Gambling Survey for Great Britain and knowingly misrepresented research on survey accuracy. Its website actively promotes ‘anti-gambling’ speech codes (including a proscription against saying that betting "can be fun"). 

It may also have influenced the Treasury’s decision last year to increase online betting duties, by funding flawed and partisan think-tank research on economic costs. It is small wonder the regulator was recently referred to in parliament as the “Anti-Gambling Commission”.

The stakes are too high for the commission to be allowed to mark its own homework – particularly when the proverbial dog has a habit of chewing inconvenient facts out of any assessment it undertakes. 

An independent review is now required to examine how we have arrived at this pass, the impact checks have had on racing, and the functioning of Britain’s regulated betting market. 

Ultimately, the decision on FRAs is too important to be left to an unaccountable – and now quite clearly partisan – regulator. Having acknowledged the “chilling” effect of affordability checks, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport should have the final say on their imposition.
Dan Waugh is a partner with Regulus Partners,  a global strategic advisory business focused on the sports and leisure sectors

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