Flutter chief angers safer gambling groups with comments on new levy

The chief executive of Paddy Power owner Flutter has provoked anger among safer gambling charities after expressing concern that funds from a new statutory levy on operators could fall into the hands of groups “campaigning to stop gambling”.

As part of a major review of the industry, the UK government on Thursday announced plans to create a new levy — collected by regulator the Gambling Commission — aimed at raising upwards of £100mn a year from betting operators to fund gambling harms research and treatment.

Flutter, Entain, Bet365 and 888 — the four biggest operators — already pay a voluntary contribution of 1 per cent of gross gaming revenues a year, but some safer gambling campaigners argue there is industry influence over the way funds are distributed.

However, Peter Jackson, chief executive of Flutter, the world’s biggest listed gambling group, told the Financial Times he hoped the funds would be distributed in a “reasonably narrow way” for research, treatment and education around addiction.

“I wouldn’t want the money to be used for people to be campaigning to stop gambling,” said Jackson. He argued that campaigners had had the “opportunity to make those cases” since the white paper consultation began two years ago, adding: “We need to be careful that people don’t feel the need to reprosecute some of those cases.”

Will Prochaska, strategy director of charity Gambling with Lives, which does not receive funding from the industry’s voluntary contributions, said “having lost the argument” it was “undignified” for the Flutter chief executive “to continue to try and influence how the money is spent in the future”.

Another gambling executive told the FT he feared the funding would be “very heavily skewed towards the anti-gambling prohibitionist agenda” and would help campaigners who argue that “all gambling is bad in the same way that all smoking is bad”.

However Matt Zarb-Cousin, director of Clean Up Gambling, said: “Those now expressing angst about how the money might be administered risk revealing to us the degree of control the sector previously enjoyed. That game is now up and independent experts will decide.”

Prochaska added that “this is exactly why we need a statutory levy” overseen by the government with funding decisions made independently “instead of on the basis of whether a delivery organisation signs up to gambling industry dogma”.

Jackson, who helped corral rival operators into launching the voluntary contributions system in 2019, said it was “frustrating” that campaigners were suspicious of industry influence over how funds were distributed.

“There’s no one . . . asking to read reports and approve them . . . we donate the money, it gets used and there are genuinely no strings attached,” insisted Jackson. The current system is run by the Betting and Gaming Council, the industry body, with charity GambleAware acting as the main commissioning agent. The BGC lobbied against the statutory levy.

Zoë Osmond, chief executive of GambleAware, said: “Ultimately a levy on the gambling industry will provide certainty and transparency around funding for essential services.”

The BGC stressed that “we rightly have no say” over the way funding is distributed currently, adding it was now “supportive” of the new scheme provided the money was distributed “genuinely independently”.

The government will run a consultation over the summer to determine how much money the statutory levy will raise, how its funding will be allocated and how it will affect smaller operators — setting the stage for fresh debate between the industry and campaigners.

NHS gambling addiction services, which do not accept funds from the industry, will be able to benefit from the government-run levy for the first time. Matt Gaskell, a psychologist who runs NHS gambling addiction clinics in northern England, said the levy “cuts out industry influence into the process for the first time, which has impeded progress for many years”, and expressed concern that “they’re still trying to influence what happens with it”.

According to the Gambling Commission, about 0.3 per cent of British adults were problem gamblers at the end of 2021, but a survey by polling company YouGov put the figure at 2.8 per cent, or almost 1.4mn people.