Highlights of the recent 9th Annual Responsible Gaming Academy event

Responsible gaming is a core element in the Casinos Austria/Austrian Lotteries group corporate philosophy. To provide training for staff, but above all to facilitate dialogue and knowledge exchange with national and international experts, the group hosted its 9th annual Responsible Gaming Academy (RGA) in Studio 44 in Vienna last March 20-21.

The event was attended by employees from across the group, representatives of the Ministry of Finance, Ministry of the Interior, Ministry for Health and Ministry of Labour, Social Affairs and Consumer Protection, as well as staff from various university institutes, gambling addiction counseling centers and treatment facilities. International guest delegates included representatives of Holland Casino, the Finnish RAY group and Loterie Romande in Switzerland.

In his opening address, Chairman Karl Stoss affirmed the group’s clear and active commitment to responsible gaming: “For us, responsible gaming is by no means an issue that is just important at the moment because it’s a key factor in the license tender procedure. We have always voluntarily forfeited revenues in the interests of player protection.”

Austrian Lotteries Vice Chairman Friedrich Stickler, who directs responsible gaming across the whole Casinos Austria/Austrian Lotteries group, explained the importance of active player protection and emphasized that such policies can only be applied effectively if the same rules apply to everyone in the market, and the applicable laws are stringently enforced by the judicial and legislative systems.

“If the law is not rigorously enforced against illegal operators, responsible gaming measures can quickly become a competitive disadvantage. This situation is not acceptable and indeed threatens the reputation of the entire industry. At the Casinos Austria/Austrian Lotteries group, acceptance of our responsibility to society lies at the very top of our agenda and will remain to do so in future, so the existence of a comprehensive, functioning player protection and responsible gaming system at national level is clearly of utmost importance to us,” explained Stickler, speaking also from experience in his capacity as President of the European Lotteries, the independent association of state lottery and toto companies in Europe.

This year’s RGA again featured a number of top-class invited speakers, including first and foremost Dr. Jeff Derevensky from McGill University in Montreal, Canada. Derevensky, whose research focuses in particular on youth gambling addiction, presented the findings of his work on the influence of traumatic childhood experiences and their potential effects on the development of a pathological gambling addiction in future life. His findings show that physical and mental abuse and neglect during childhood are highly significant for the subsequent development of gambling problems and addiction.

He said that, in a current survey of 1,327 adolescents, almost eight out of ten admit having gambled in some form in the previous year. One fifth gamble at least once a week. The number of pathological gamblers is particularly alarming: 2.1 percent of the young people surveyed are addicted to gambling (4.1 percent of males and 0.7 percent of females in the sample). In the adult population, as a rule 0.5 to 1.0 percent are classed as “potential gambling addicts”.

Derevensky has been following the responsible gaming activities in the Casinos Austria Group with great interest for many years and confirms that Casinos Austria, Austrian Lotteries and their subsidiaries all literally play a “decisive international pioneering role in responsible gaming”.

Further information on the topic of “Youth Gambling Addiction” can be found on his institute’s website at www.youthgambling.com.