BGC opens SiGMA News European Safer Gambling Week series

For one week each November, the regulated-gaming world doesn’t whisper. It speaks. It rallies and shares ideas, and it challenges itself. Welcome to SiGMA News’ coverage of European Safer Gambling Week 2025, when operators, charities, regulators, and treatment networks across Europe stand behind one essential message: safer gambling is not optional – it’s vital. With the week underway and the European safer gambling conversation taking centre stage, what follows is the first of an exclusive series of interviews from SiGMA News.

This year, the Betting & Gaming Council (BGC), which leads the UK’s regulated betting and gaming sector, steps into the spotlight to open the conversation. In an exclusive interview with SiGMA News, Grainne Hurst, Chief Executive of the BGC, outlines how the regulated sector intends to lead the conversation – not just for a week, but for a year and beyond.

How European Safer Gambling Week took shape

First introduced in 2021 by the European Gaming & Betting Association (EGBA), European Safer Gambling Week was designed as a pan-European initiative to unite the industry, regulators, and support services behind a shared mission: to raise awareness of risk, highlight support tools, and promote responsible behaviour.

By the 2024 edition, participation had grown significantly. The activity expanded its reach to 26 countries and brought eight national gambling authorities on board.

It reached more than 3.1 million people online, based on social media and campaign activity reach metrics. The week is more than an annual campaign. It acts as a barometer of progress, a test of commitment and unmistakable evidence that the sector is serious about working towards safer gambling outcomes.

“European Safer Gambling Week is an important moment for our industry to unite, not just in the UK but across Europe, with charities, regulators and parliamentarians to promote safer play,” says Grainne Hurst, Chief Executive of the BGC.

“For our members, safer gambling is not a slogan. It is a year-round commitment. Millions of people enjoy betting responsibly. For those who need help, support is always available.”

In this series opener, the BGC outlines where safer gambling stands today. We look at the progress made, the technology used, the culture being built, and the challenges ahead. From tomorrow through to Sunday, voices from treatment, sport, lived experience, and regulation will contribute to a deeper, safer gambling conversation. But here and now, the BGC sets the tone.

Progress and priorities in safer gambling

Across the industry, the past twelve months have been shaped by sharper tools, clearer data, and a stronger public expectation that operators must prove responsibility, not just promise it. The BGC notes that this shift is evident in how players now interact with protection tools and in the behavioural trends emerging across regulated markets.

Hurst describes the change as measurable rather than rhetorical.

“Last year’s European Safer Gambling Week was record-breaking, with over 1.5 million unique accounts using a safer gambling tool. Deposit limits rose by 14 percent, and nearly half were set for the first time.”

For her, the numbers show that awareness campaigns translate into real habits when operators design tools people actually want to use.

The wider safer gambling picture includes backing all 62 measures in the Government’s Gambling White Paper, supporting new stake limits for young adults, and preparing for the statutory levy that will fund research, education and treatment from 2025 onward. The levy is a government-mandated annual payment that took effect on April 6, 2025. Operators made their first payments in September and October 2025, providing stable funding for nationwide research, education, and treatment programmes.

Hurst says the focus is not on the quantity of measures but on consistency. “Progress is not just about policy. It is about impact.”

She points to stronger affordability systems, better customer-interaction models and closer work with treatment providers as signs that the regulated sector is shifting from box-ticking to genuine behavioural insight. The aim is early detection, clearer conversations with customers and fewer people slipping through the net.

With progress established, the next challenge is scale. The question is no longer whether the tools work, but how quickly and consistently operators can apply them across platforms, products, and jurisdictions.

Technology, responsibility and the limits of automation

If progress is measured in behaviour, then technology is the engine driving it. AI and behavioural analytics now sit at the centre of early-risk detection, allowing operators to flag changes in play patterns long before a customer reaches a crisis point. For Hurst, the question has never been whether innovation belongs in safer gambling, but how it is used, and how clearly it is understood.

“Technology has transformed what safer gambling looks like day-to-day,” she says. “It lets operators act in real time, at scale, and with precision.”

She points to initiatives such as GamProtect, which allows operators to share critical risk information so that support follows a customer, not just an account. It is, she argues, one of the strongest examples of cross-industry cooperation to date.

However, the BGC’s view is that no algorithm can replace judgment. Even the most advanced systems still need human oversight, context and scrutiny. Automation may highlight patterns, but people decide what to do with them. That distinction matters in a sector where trust is earned slowly and lost quickly.

The challenge ahead is transparency. Customers must understand why an intervention happens, what data triggered it, and what their options are. Without that clarity, even the best-designed systems risk creating confusion rather than confidence.  

For the BGC, ethical use of data is now part of brand responsibility. The message is simple: innovation should support protection, not obscure it. European Safer Gambling Week is the ideal opportunity to emphasise that.

Balancing regulation and sustainability

Across Europe, the regulatory landscape is continually maturing. New affordability checks, strengthened oversight, and the statutory levy, now in its initial implementation phase, have created new pressures for operators. For the BGC, the task is to support reform while ensuring the regulated sector remains strong enough to protect customers.

Hurst rejects the idea that regulation and sustainability pull in opposite directions.

“We work closely with government, regulators and our members to ensure that regulation is effective and proportionate.”

The aim is to foster an environment where responsible play thrives and customers stay within licensed, safeguarded channels.

The risk lies not in the rules themselves, but in the consequences no one intends. When regulation becomes unclear or too heavy, players may move towards unlicensed sites that offer no protection at all. The BGC’s task is to help members incorporate structure, data, and clarity so that safer gambling becomes part of their daily practice, rather than something done for show.

This balance, of high standards alongside a stable and competitive market, will shape the next phase of the safer gambling conversation across Europe.

For now, the message is clear: a well-regulated, commercially healthy sector protects more people than a fragmented one. The work ahead is to keep those priorities moving in the same direction.

Collaboration, trust and the road to 2026

If culture shapes behaviour inside companies, collaboration shapes confidence outside them. For the BGC, rebuilding and maintaining public trust depends on how well the industry works with the organisations that sit beyond it: charities, researchers, clinicians, and regulators.

“Trust is earned through action and openness,” Hurst says. “Our role is to bring partners together and ensure progress is joined up.”

Over the past four years, BGC members have contributed more than £170 million to research, prevention, and treatment services. From 2025, this becomes a £100 million annual statutory levy, with around half directed to NHS provision. The shift is more than financial. It indicates a move towards a clearer, more accountable system where treatment networks receive stable, long-term funding.

Partnerships with organisations such as GamCare, Gordon Moody and EPIC Global now sit at the centre of the regulated sector’s safer gambling efforts. These relationships offer early insight into emerging harms and pressure points that data alone cannot fully explain. They also bring lived experience into boardrooms where decisions once rested solely on commercial or regulatory considerations.

Collaboration requires transparency when systems fall short and honesty when players are let down. Public confidence depends on consistent, visible action. People increasingly expect operators to demonstrate, not just declare, their commitment. The BGC acknowledges that the work is ongoing and that scrutiny is part of a healthy system.

As 2026 approaches, the task is to strengthen this partnership model while maintaining clear roles and responsibilities. Treatment networks will expand, research will sharpen, and the regulatory landscape will continue to develop. For the BGC, the path forward is rooted in openness: sharing data where appropriate, sharing learning where necessary, and sharing accountability across the entire player-protection network.

Culture, leadership and the shift toward responsible design

Policies protect structures, but culture protects people. For Hurst, the most important progress in recent years has happened behind the scenes, inside companies, where safer gambling has moved from a regulatory requirement to a leadership expectation.

“A responsible culture starts from the top,” she says. “It is part of staff training, customer communications, product innovation, and board-level decision-making.”

The BGC highlights three areas where this cultural shift has become most visible.

First, staff awareness.

Front-line teams now receive sharper, scenario-based training that helps them recognise risk, spot triggers and start early conversations with customers. It is a shift from compliance scripts to applied judgment.

Second, product and design.

Operators are increasingly embedding safer gambling into product journeys rather than bolting it on at the end. That means clearer language, friction used thoughtfully, and features that support control rather than encourage chase behaviour. The move toward “enabling design” – where deposit caps, time reminders and budget-setting tools feel natural rather than punitive – is becoming industry standard.

Third, communication and tone.

More operators now devote 20 percent of their advertising space to safer gambling messages across TV, radio, and digital channels, not as disclaimers, but as part of brand identity. Tone matters: calm, consistent and human messaging strengthens trust far more effectively than reactive one-line warnings.

For the BGC, the direction of travel is clear. European Safer Gambling Week puts safer gambling in the spotlight, but leaders shape how the public receives the message through their decisions behind closed doors.

The intention is simple: a stronger, more informed culture reduces harm long before it ever reaches the point of intervention.

Clarity, consistency and a culture of protection

As European Safer Gambling Week continues, the challenge for the industry is no longer just awareness, but also follow-through. The regulated sector has sharper tools, clearer rules, and deeper partnerships than ever before. The next step is to turn those assets into a consistent, everyday practice across every product, every platform, and every operator.

For Hurst, success in 2026 will be measured not only in regulation or technology, but in behaviour.

“Success is about outcomes, not outputs,” she says. “It means more people using safer gambling tools, more early interventions when risk is detected, and greater awareness of support services such as GamCare and GamStop.”

That focus on outcomes reflects a wider shift across Europe: the move from stating commitments to demonstrating impact. The statutory levy is now providing long-term funding for research, education, and treatment. Improved data-sharing frameworks will help operators intervene earlier. A maturing regulatory environment will ensure that the rules remain predictable and consistent.

But impact still depends on public trust. Without trust, technology is suspicious. Without trust, regulation feels punitive. Without trust, safer gambling tools sit unused. The long-term test for the sector is whether it can deliver protection that feels intuitive rather than intrusive, proactive rather than reactive, and human rather than mechanical.

Where the conversation goes from here

This article opens a week-long series that will explore those questions from every angle. Over the coming days, SiGMA News will bring you perspectives from lived experience, clinical specialists, sport, treatment networks and regulators. These voices show what safer gambling looks like in the real world, not just in policy.

For now, the BGC sets the tone: responsibility is not seasonal. It is the structure, the standard, and the expectation on which the future of regulated gambling rests.

Tomorrow, we continue our European Safer Gambling Week coverage, turning to lived experience, where prevention begins with the truth told by those who have already paid the price.

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