A new industry snapshot commissioned by 1xCare and produced by SBC Insights argues that gambling harm reduction has leaned too heavily on restricting players and not enough on informing them. The report, titled Shaping the Future of Player Education, surveys education measures across Europe, Latin America and Africa, drawing on senior operators and academics to map where the sector stands and what it should do next. Its central claim is straightforward: players who do not understand how gambling products work cannot make informed choices about them.
And that gap, the report suggests, is where most policy has been pointing in the wrong direction.
What the Report Signals for Operators and Regulators
The findings carry commercial and compliance weight for anyone running a licensed operation. Below are the strategic reference points worth extracting before the detail.
- Outcomes over process: 1xCare Chair Simon Westbury frames the measure of good regulation as falling harm, not the number of compliance steps added. That reframing challenges how many jurisdictions currently score success.
- Player apathy is the real obstacle. A cited figure shows 60% of players are indifferent to safer gambling tools, which means building more tools solves little if engagement stays flat.
- Staff training becomes a frontline asset: knowledgeable customer-facing teams are positioned as central to player protection, not a back-office formality.
- Marketing is reframed as a channel for education rather than a threat to be curbed, a stance that sits awkwardly against tightening advertising rules.
- The supply chain shares responsibility. Game designers, KYC providers and payment firms are all named as potential contributors to harm.
Why Education, and Why Now
Deposit limits, loss limits and time limits remain the most familiar protection mechanisms. Each places the corrective burden on the individual. The report reads this as a quiet assumption that the player, rather than the product or the wider ecosystem, is where the problem sits. That framing has consequences: it shapes what regulators demand and what operators build.
To test alternatives, the study looks outside gambling entirely. It examines how cryptocurrency exchanges, prediction markets and foreign exchange platforms educate their users, then identifies where gambling operators fall short by comparison. These are all high-risk consumer sectors that have wrestled with the same tension between growth and disclosure. What gambling can borrow from them is the report’s more original line of inquiry (and one not every operator will welcome).
Regulation With Side Effects
Rules across three continents have grown stricter over the past five years, and the report tracks how those shifts reshaped player protection strategies. Quirino Mancini, a member of the 1xCare advisory board, warned that regulation carries unintended consequences and urged operators to work with regulators before changes land rather than after.
His prescription is specific: regular audits, disciplined risk management, and compliance rules that are clear, sustainable and balanced. Plain version. Write rules operators can actually follow, then check whether they work.
That cooperative posture matters because the alternative is a cycle of reactive restriction, where each headline prompts a new rule and each new rule prompts a workaround. Whether operators genuinely have the leverage to shape regulation before implementation is the harder question the report leaves open.
Marketing: Problem or Part of the Fix?
Advertising has become the primary target of tougher regimes. Criticism from mainstream media and politicians has driven curfews, sponsorship limits and restrictions on celebrity endorsements. Yet marketing is also how legal operators reach audiences legitimately, something the unlicensed black market has no need to do.
Chris Bird, another 1xCare board member, put the counter-case directly: marketing should be part of the answer, not part of the problem. He argued that operators and their partners can use those same channels to educate customers, steer people toward lower-risk products, and keep players inside the regulated market where safeguards exist.
Bird extended the responsibility further down the chain. His questions were pointed: does game design encourage unhealthy behaviour, do KYC systems carry exploitable weaknesses, and are payment providers unintentionally making harmful gambling easier? Each implicates a part of the industry that has largely escaped the marketing debate.
Building an Evidence Base Worth Debating
The snapshot exists to provoke discussion, not to close it. By interviewing senior leaders and academics, it describes current practice and recommends next steps for the coming years. It arrives as 1xCare positions itself as a body promoting coordinated, evidence-informed and human-centred responses to gambling-related harm.
Sissel Weitzhändler, also on the advisory board, cautioned that not all evidence is equal, calling on regulators, academics and operators to agree common definitions and shared datasets so research becomes genuinely useful. She linked prevention and treatment as one system, arguing that effective frameworks must offer clear pathways to independent support for addiction, mental health, debt and domestic violence, not merely dictate when accounts get restricted. She added a privacy caveat: lawmakers should weigh whether data requests are necessary or simply intrusive.
Three continents, one recurring problem: fragmented information that no single stakeholder can fix alone. The full study, alongside the wider International Player Safety Index series, is available through the SBC Insights coverage of responsible gambling research.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the 1xCare player education report about?
It is a global snapshot of the safer gambling education measures operators currently use, produced by SBC Insights and commissioned by 1xCare. The report examines gaps in current practice and recommends where the industry should focus over the next few years.
Why does the report criticise deposit and loss limits?
Not because they are ineffective, but because relying on them alone places the corrective burden on the player. The argument is that limits assume the problem sits with the individual rather than with product design, operators or the broader ecosystem.
What figure does the report cite on player engagement?
It references earlier research showing 60% of players are apathetic toward safer gambling tools, a signal that availability alone does not drive use.
How does the report treat gambling advertising?
As a potential solution rather than only a risk. Board members argue marketing can educate customers and keep them within the regulated market, provided it is used responsibly.
Which regions does the study cover?
Europe, Latin America and Africa, with particular attention to how regulation has tightened across these markets over the past five years.
