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Some of the biggest sources of promotional value for players come from online casino VIP and loyalty programs. However, a recent report in the United Kingdom shows that the UK Gambling Commission could be deciding to crack down and eliminate those types of programs under what could be misguided ideas.
UK Potentially Banning Loyalty Programs
Online casino players are notorious for jumping around from brand to brand. There are hundreds of viable online casinos with good reputations out there, and it’s no joke when we say that most players prefer to hop around than to stick with one site for the long run.
Loyalty programs and VIP promotional programs have been set up to combat how fickle players can be about where they play, but these programs are under fire in the United Kingdom.
What we’re seeing is that a recent government report has shown that the United Kingdom Gambling Commission has some serious problems with these types of promotional programs, and they could be looking to ban them in what they believe to be an effort to protect problem gamblers but that’s actually looking like a misguided notion that will take value away from people who enjoy sticking with the same online casino brand.
Details From This Report
What the report in question has shown is that players who have made it to higher levels in VIP programs make more deposits than those who don’t.
In other news, water is wet.
Their argument is that these programs take advantage of people by giving them more value with bonuses and promotions because they deposit more often, but that’s the nature of the industry on every level. If you select for people who deposit the most, of course they’re going to have higher placement in these types of programs because the level you’re at depends largely on how much you play.
In other words, they’re more or less saying that people who play more are inherently problem gamblers, which is misguided at best and deliberately obtuse at worst.
Specific Numbers
Here are some specific numbers that came out of this report:
- For one operator surveyed, only around 2 percent of players have the highest-tier VIP status, and that accounted for around 80 percent of total individual deposits on that platform.
- From another operator, they had a top-tier status that contained about 5 percent of their players, and that made up just under 60 percent of all of their deposits.
- The third primary operator from the given report picked up slightly less than 50 percent of their deposits from 3 percent of players.
In other words, the Pareto Principle (also known as the 80/20 or 95/5 rule) is in effect just like everyone in the world would expect it to be. That’s another way of saying that this is completely normal in terms of the distributions of the individual numbers of deposit.
The Issue of Problem Gambling
Here’s where things get particularly transparent as to how bad of an idea it is for the UK to simply ban these types of loyalty programs.
The report estimated that there are around 47,000 top-tier VIP players in the United Kingdom, and it was also estimated that around 8 percent of them were considered problem gamblers.
Talk about an overreaction. Of course if you select a specific group of players who deposit more, they’re going to include slightly more of a percentage of problem gamblers than what the general population has to offer, but that’s an issue of selection bias.
In short, it doesn’t mean that that loyalty/VIP programs are a problem because causation and correlation are not the same thing.
Where This is Going
Unfortunately, it’s looking like some do-gooders are going to try to do some good and ban programs that give players a tremendous amount of value. While there may be good intentions in all of this, there’s a well-known expression that the road to you-know-where is paved with good intentions, and that could definitely prove to be the case here.