‘Hidden harms’ endured by betting shop employees highlight flaws in UK’s ‘safer gambling’ framework
Inequality of responsibility is rife in the gambling industry, with frontline staff suffering the unseen consequences. A rare and pointed study that shines a light on the experiences of betting shop employees highlights the need for gambling reforms that acknowledge these ‘hidden harms’.
Prior to this study, little attention had been given to how both staff and patrons of betting shops are left in a vulnerable position, owing to the way in which premises are managed. Under the terms of the Social Responsibility Code (SRC), which falls under the 2025 Gambling Act, frontline employees are required to intervene where they see evidence of people experiencing difficulties with gambling. This can include excluding people, and carrying out age-verification procedures.
In 2023, researchers from the University of Bristol interviewed a total of ten current and retired betting shop employees. Participants were asked about their experiences of implementing these measures, referred to by the Gambling Commission (which regulates gambling in Great Britain) as a ‘safer gambling’ approach.
Participants’ insights
Study participants generally spoke positively about when they had been able to encourage a customer to reflect on their gambling and the harms it was creating.
However, participants said this came with increasing levels of stress and anxiety since the introduction of Fixed Odds Betting Terminals (FOBTs), which introduced casino-like games, the intense nature of which often caused people to become frustrated, angry and often aggressive
Participants noted that the Social Responsibility Code had unfairly shifted the onus from operators onto frontline employees, leaving staff to bear the risk of trying to reduce gambling harm in a potentially hostile environment. The requirement for staff to manage and move between shops without warning was another point of tension.
Staff talked about “FOBT alerts” that customers were spending excessive time or money on the machines which required them to step out from behind their screens and counters to approach the customer. This placed them in an intractable dilemma, where they risked dismissal if they failed to intervene, and a disciplinary offence if it meant they were not behind the screen taking bets. The fear of customer aggression was prevalent.
Reframing responsibility
Co-investigators Dr Samuel Kirwan and Dr Large concluded that the existing ‘safer gambling’ codes are not only an inadequate harm prevention measure for betting shop customers, but also place frontline staff in a precarious position where they are already balancing competing demands in a stressful environment.
They said: “It should not remain possible for regulation to permit operators to offer products that are arguably intrinsically harmful, in spaces that are potentially unsafe, whilst being allowed to shift the responsibility and risk for any ensuing harms onto their lowest-paid employees.”
Widening understanding around social harms
The project was presented at the British Society of Criminology, at the European Society of Criminology, at the European Group for the Study of Deviance and Social Control, and at the Bristol Hub for Gambling Harms 2024 Symposium. The findings were also shared with the UK Gambling Commission.
Next steps
Echoing one of the Hub’s primary aims to understand the causes and effects of gambling harms alongside the circumstances in which they occur, Dr Large and Dr Kirwan aim to explore the wider impacts of gambling harms within the context of technology and regulation.