LeoVegas to collaborate with university for problem gambling research
Sweden based online gambling operator LeoVegas Group have announced that they will be partnering with the clinical neuroscience department of the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden for a four-year research project on identifying problem gambling.
Karolinska Institutet is among the world’s leading destinations for medical research. ©Adrian Trinkaus/Unsplash
LeoVegas group said in a statement that the aim of this research project will be to “improve understanding of how to identify signs of problem gambling and ultimately prevent it”. LeoVegas will be funding this research project as well as providing any relevant data that they possess to the researchers.
LeoVegas Group, like other big operators in the world, are hoping to find evidence-based research that can be used to quickly identify signs of problem gambling among its users – a side of the industry that has been especially well-funded in recent years but not quite as robust as the industry would like to be.
In February 2021 Kindred Group had become the first operator to officially disclose how much of its earnings had come through what it counted as harmful gambling – that figure stood at 4% at the time – and reiterated their well-known ambition to take that figure to zero over the long term.
A number of operators have worked on this area of the industry over the years, but more and more of these efforts are now being prioritized and put front and center – particularly in countries like Sweden, where gambling regulations and user protections – particularly for the younger generations – are the dominant narratives in the gambling industry over the last few years. LeoVegas Group CEO Gustaf Hagman said the industry needed to contribute more knowledge to such research.
“Responsible gaming is an important priority for LeoVegas Group. We believe that our industry must take greater responsibility for contributing knowledge and facts about gambling-related problems, and learning how to minimize these issues. We are proud to be partnering with Karolinska Institutet to carry out this valuable research and hope that decision-makers and the igaming industry will be able to apply the findings in order to support more responsible gambling.”
Research to be submitted for ethical review
It goes without saying that gambling operators who themselves fund research about problem gambling are walking a narrow path ethically, and must sufficiently show their distance from the actual research that goes on. According to LeoVegas Group’s release, the “collaboration guarantees the researchers academic freedom, and the research will shortly be submitted for ethical review”.
The Karolinska Institutet is among the world’s leading research destinations for medicine, and is home to the Nobel Assembly, which awards the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine every year. On Karolinska’s side, the project will be led by Philip Lindner, who is an associate professor with experience in digital psychiatry research, and leads the university’s research unit.
Lindner and the department of clinical neuroscience have worked on projects involving tools for detecting and treating mental illness, and this project is likely to be branched under those broader topics. Lindner said that the availability of the data that LeoVegas Group are going to provide will be a major boost.
“As researchers at universities, we have a duty to spread knowledge that is useful to society. This collaboration gives us a unique opportunity to study data that hasn’t previously been available for research. We hope that the collaboration will lead to new ways of identifying and helping players at risk, at the earliest possible stage.”
LeoVegas were pulled up in UK earlier this year
LeoVegas, who are believed to be in the closing stages of being acquired by MGM Resorts at the moment, had landed in hot soup in August this year, when the UK Gambling Commission had fined them £1.32 million.
The UKGC’s fine on LeoVegas had involved several shortcomings on the operator’s part, including lapses in player protection measures. The operator has since been required to be part of an auditing process to ensure that they are remedying the situation, which also involved shortcomings on the anti-money laundering measures that were required of them.
Most prominently, though, LeoVegas had been pulled up for not showing proactive intervention when customers showed signs of problem gambling, such as restricted deposits, canceled withdrawals and long sessions of gaming late at night or early in the morning.
