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A lot of chatter has been happening about a national-level self-exclusion registry for gambling in Australia. However, a name has finally been given to this project, and it will be called BetStop. This will soon be a resource available through all regulated online operators in the country.
BetStop Coming to Australia Online Gambling
One of the responsibilities that businesses have in the online gambling world is offering resources to those who have problem gambling issues. Additionally, a key tool in that realm is of self-exclusion. In the past, that has been something that’s difficult to enforce and relatively easy for players to get around.
However, Australia is making a more viable option come closer to reality. This is with their BetStop project that is the name of their upcoming national self-exclusion registry.
This new model is designed to prevent many of the problems that have made self-exclusion difficult to maintain in the past. With that said, some of the details are still a bit up in the air. This isn’t something that has been completely implemented yet. However, the vision that regulators seem to have in Australia appears to be something we think most people will be able to get behind.
What BetStop Offers Players
For someone with issues with problem gambling, self-exclusion is a powerful tool. The idea is simple and straightforward. The player decides that they no longer want to be allowed to play, and they ask the operator in question to deny them future play. However, BetStop offers players something better than the standard approaches to self-exclusion.
- Since it’s a national-level register, all operators would be required to be under the same umbrella.
- This takes the onus off of players to put their names on a variety of disjointed lists that aren’t connected.
- Additionally, it offers options for lifetime self-exclusion, which is something many registers do not make available.
It’s looking like Australian regulators have looked at what’s available in other parts of the world and worked to make it better. That’s how innovation happens in virtually any industry. Along those lines, it appears to be how things are moving along in this one in the Australian market.
Minor Criticisms
Some relatively minor criticisms are already being made of this service. For one, the minimum time for self-exclusion is three months. That’s a period of time that may be too long to be effective for many players who would otherwise self-exclude for a smaller period of time. The argument there is that many will be faced with a choice between a three-month self-ban or nothing. Accordingly, players could then decide that nothing is a better option that such a relatively long ban.
While it’s better than nothing, we can definitely see where these criticisms are coming from. A minimum period of one month (or just 30 days) would perhaps be a better stepping stone.
Even with this limitation, we definitely think that this approach is progress compared to other similar systems in the industry in different parts of the world.
When Players Can Expect This to Be Implemented
The regulatory body has announced that this registry will start being available sometime in the next few months. From the sounds of things, it should be completely up and running by the end of the year. That’s a pretty solid timeline for BetStop to be implemented. However, players need to keep in mind that any system like this usually goes through a period of fleshing things out. They may decide to tweak some things as time goes on and as they get more feedback from players.
Overall, it’s a great system to bring to the table. We strongly suspect that this will be something that plenty of other jurisdictions look to do. However, they will have the benefit of seeing which tweaks come after the first few months of this system being in action.