Communicated Content – According to the latest news, English Premier League club Crystal Palace has announced a partnership with UK’s national self-exclusion service for online gambling, GameStop. GamStop is a free self-exclusion scheme supported by the government of the UK that lets gamblers restrict their excessive gambling spree and control their compulsive gambling disorders. This UK-based service allows consumers to exclude themselves from online gambling sites for a period of 6 months, 1 year, or 5 years, depending on their necessity. This scheme has proven to be beneficial to punters who have a problematic relationship with gambling by protecting the resources from suffering losses. Currently, GamStop has more than 195,000 consumers registered under it, online gambling increasing more due to the effect of lockdown.
Under this association, the top-tier football club will share information on GamStop across its social channels, including the men’s and women’s teams,s and donate advertising collateral at its Selhurst Park home stadium. GamStop will additionally work with the club to provide free training and advice to help vulnerable people within the community in Eagle’s South London home.
Football having a guaranteed reach makes it easier to promote the awareness programs and also safeguard the players of the football clubs themselves. Other clubs are also reaching out to GamStop and are looking forward to collaborating with them in the near future. This is one step closer to battling the vices of gambling addiction.
Partnership With Crystal Palace FC
Fiona Palmer, CEO of GamStop has encouraged the partnership with Crystal Palace FC during a statement that Crystal Palace’s support was going to be hugely beneficial to everybody in ensuring that people who may benefit from NonStopCasino sites not on GamStop were aware of the scheme. She added that the pandemic had led to an increase in sign-ups and they were trying to ensure that folks who were struggling with their gambling addiction or have a loved one experiencing problems, would now know where they could access support. The support of Crystal Palace would help them extend their reach and they also hope that other Premier League and women’s clubs would follow their example.
The club has encouraged users to seek out professional help and support from the ones providing treatment, encouraging the use of GamStop services. It has also promoted utilizing tools such as blocking software and bank blocking. This would help prevent toxic gambling habits.
Steve Parish, the Chairman of Crystal Palace said that they were delighted to be able to help raise awareness of this service that held utmost importance. According to him, most people who gambled on football did so to escalate their enjoyment of the sport. He also said that GamStop would give people experiencing problems with their gambling an opportunity to regain control over their addiction.
Crystal Palace also became the first club in the Premier League to start working with BeGambleAware charity in its 2018 agreement, emphasizing its commitment to gamble safely. This announcement was simultaneous to the review of the 2005 Gambling Act undertaken by the UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) at a time when the relationship between professional sports and betting faces started receiving scrutiny from both the political and public spheres.
Future Plans
Multiple Premier League clubs have held a meeting to discuss the collaboration between the two sectors, with a particular focus on shirt sponsorships by betting operators. This was held in March 2021.
GamStop reported earlier this year that they noted a rise in the number of consumers, including more than 55,000 women registered to self-exclude themselves from online gambling, compulsive habits brought about mostly at the beginning of COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020. Currently, more than 25% of women are registered under GamStop.
Future plans of GamStop and EPL club Crystal Palace include the advancement of GamStop policies by creating a space for healthy gambling habits and discouraging gambling-related disorders in consumers. On the other hand, it also seeks to promote other clubs in adopting the same policies as Crystal Palace FC, leading to an increase in the number of partnerships with GamStop.
Concluding Thoughts
The gambling protection organizations like GamStop are implying extending support to the football clubs like Crystal Palace by aiding them in accumulating resources for expenditure and maintenance of the team. For that, Crystal Palace or clubs collaborating in the future would have to provide exposure to GamStop. If GamStop benefits directly from more collaborations than football clubs would get more resources to help them.
GamStop and Crystal Palace FC’s alliance has led to the inclusion of online schemes into the sports market which would benefit multiple sports groups and anti-gambling schemes in the future.
