Kindred Group continues its efforts to emphasize responsible gambling across all of its gaming initiatives. Its “Journey Towards Zero” campaign is working, according to the company.
The “Journey Towards Zero” campaign has as its final objective zero revenue coming from individuals who experience gambling problems. Kindred hopes to reach that by the end of next year, and provide quarterly updates on its progress.
Despite seeing a slight surge in the fourth quarter of last year, when the segment accounted for 4% of its revenue, Kindred has maintained a lower percentage of problem gambler revenue over the last year. In the third quarter of 2021 and the first two quarters of this year, that revenue was 3.3%.
Responsible Gambling at the Forefront
Kindred’s responsible gambling efforts focus on all demographics, but mostly on those between 18 and 25 years old. It states that this group, based on research, has a higher risk of succumbing to gambling addiction. Therefore, it targets the individuals in a “more personalized and risk-averse manner.’
To achieve its goal, it has implemented dedicated spending limits and greater intervention within the company. Kindred also states that its Responsible Gambling Analysts take a more “cautious approach” when dealing with customers in the age group.
Even though the share from high-risk players is flat between the first and second quarters, it is good to see an increase in the improvement effect after interventions which validates our early intervention approach. However, we still have work to do to further decrease the number towards our ambition of zero per cent revenue generated from harmful gambling,” said Henrik Tjärnström, CEO of Kindred Group.
In addition to leading its own efforts, Kindred has teamed up with a dedicated body targeting responsible gaming. During the second quarter, it partnered with QuitGamble.com and is now promoting the platform so customers have additional support channels. The partnership is an extension of other responsible gambling initiatives that include Gamban and RecoverMe.
While maintaining a small percentage of its traffic and revenue from the at-risk segment, Kindred also reports that its overall attention to responsible gambling is improving. It stated that, following interaction with the company’s initiative, 84.7% of at-risk customers improved their gaming to be more responsible. This is up from 76.6% from last year, and is a slight increase on the 83.1% from the first quarter.
Gauging Kindred’s Success
Kindred Head of Responsible Gaming & Research Maris Bonello provided an update on the company’s Journey Towards Zero today. In it, she reiterated the success of the campaign, adding that Kindred continues to “increase transparency” and “pave the way for the wider industry” to follow in the company’s footsteps.
Casino.org reached out to Kindred to understand how it arrives at its figures and how it determines what constitutes a “high-risk” customer. There are no industry standards for reaching these determinations, which makes it difficult to gauge different responsible gambling programs, as important as they are.
Kindred responded with an overview of their processes, pointing to a couple of pages on the subject on their website. It indicates that it relies on self-exclusion and the Problem Gambling Severity Index (PGSI), among other things, to calculate the success of the program.
These allow for a lot of flexibility and leeway in the presentation of statistics. However, while Kindred uses an established list of questions to determine its classifications, there is always a degree of error embedded in any survey.
In addition, the US National Library of Medicine has determined that the PGSI may have an inherent flaw. It states that the system is “weak in assessing low to moderate problem severity, a notable limitation of most brief gambling screens.”
This doesn’t mean that Kindred’s data is inaccurate or that the “Journey Towards Zero” campaign is not serving a needed purpose. However, it may indicate that the gambling industry needs a standardized approach to responsible gambling for all data to carry the same weight.
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