Entain Launches Technology-led Player Protection Initiative Across UK Brands

Leading betting and gaming operator Entain has launched a technology-led player protection initiative known as ARC (Advanced Responsibility and Care) to identify UK customers at greatest risk of potential financial problems and proactively implement staking limits and tighter affordability checks.

Entain’s affordability framework under ARC uses open source and commercially available data on customers combined with behavioural indicators. Its data scientists have built models for customers demonstrating varying levels of potential financial risk which are now live on affordability across all the company’s 14 UK brands.

“We have been working on player affordability concepts for the past 18 months as part of our ARC affordability programme. This aims to identify relevant limits at the right time to protect customers whom our technology has identified as being vulnerable, or particularly at risk,” Peter Marcus, Group Operations Director at Entain, who is leading the ARC initiative, said.

“For those we believe are at most financial risk, we set limits which only increase if those individuals share certain information about their affordability. This means the vast majority of customers who show no indications of financial risk can still bet with us freely. We think this is an important step in preserving personal freedoms, and will also greatly benefit the horse-racing industry, which is concerned about the impact of blanket measures on its future viability,” Marcus added.

“We firmly believe that a more personalised, individual approach to player protection is the way forward which is why, for the most vulnerable customers, we have taken action as soon as we can. We are deeply committed to giving every customer the best experiences and protection we can, tailored to their particular needs,” Jette Nygaard-Andersen, Chief Executive of Entain, said.

Entain is continuing to develop ARC, with further models and behavioural indicators still in development, to include variable stake limits depending on the risk level of the customer. ARC is due to be fully live in the UK market across all Entain brands from this summer, being customised for specific countries internationally and different cultural norms later in the year.