Offer and popularity increasing

Minors of age (and adults) who want to gamble online can choose from a constantly growing offer. The increasing popularity of poker, especially, among young people gives us great cause for concern. The internet hosts more and more (illegal) gambling sites. Gambling via mobile phones is also increasing. This is an international phenomenon. Participation in lotteries via mobile phones is a booming market. According to some observers, the lotteries, bets and other money games sector on mobile phones will have 380 million players worldwide in 2010, who will bet 12 billion dollars per year. Money games are expected to become the most popular mobile phone service within the next three years, helped in that by the development of simplified money transfer systems. Even digital television may become a platform. Europe counts 3.3 million consumers today who regularly give in to a little betting on the internet, representing a total turnover of 4.5 billion Euros.
In any case the gambling business is increasingly moving from the café and the casino to the internet and into people's living rooms. And a growing number of minors are involved. That is why this problem must also be followed within the Insafe Network.

A study made by the CRIOC about the consumption of money games, based on a survey held in 2006 among 2305 youth aged 10 to 17, shows that 2 out of every 5 young people have already played for money. This is an increase in comparison to 2005, when having played for money was only the case for 1 out of 4 youths. The study shows that the stakes can be high and that dependence increases. Young players spend an average of 6.50 Euros per month on these games, but there are also some young people who contribute larger amounts - up to 40 Euros per month - to this activity. The average age at which children begin to play for money is 11 years and 8 months. Scratch-card games are favourite (with 33%), followed by amusement arcades and the Lotto (30%), card games and bowling (7%) and gambling on the internet (6%). Young players participate more than once a week in gambling on the internet, card games or placing sporting bets. Text gambling, lotteries and scratch games are used once a week. 6% of young players state that they feel permanently attracted to the game, 4% say that the use the game as a sort of way to forget their problems and 3% say that they feel tense and irritable when they play less often; the same percentage of youth state that their expenditure on money games has increased. The consequences of taking part in gambling are not insignificant if we take into account that 3% of youths keep their participation to these games hidden from their closest relatives and that only 2% of the players are aware of their dependence on the games. Moreover, this dependence on gambling is related to the dependence on tobacco, alcohol or drugs and gambling is increasingly becoming the first step toward dependence generally. In conclusion: many youths participate in money games that are forbidden by law, but are easily or without any problem accessible through telephones or the internet.

We lack statistics on the success of poker among minors of age in Belgium, but our national Gaming Commission and the competent police authorities have issued warnings about the problem. In The Netherlands the report entitled "Het gezicht van poker" (the face of poker) published by the ‘College van toezicht op de kansspelen’ ('The Netherlands gaming control board') and an online survey organized by the website Kaboem, that especially addresses to young people, show that poker is becoming more and more popular in the 15 to 25 age group. The first enquiry speaks of over 800 000 youths who have played poker in the past year, 31% of whom play it more than once a month, spending an average of 3.5 hours a week on it. Almost 25% of the young players also play on the internet, and 50% of them do that more than once a month. 25% of the young people indicate that playing poker is addictive. Recent news show that young people could also get into financial trouble as a result of their poker playing. The online survey of Kaboem, held among 1300 visitors in the 12 to 17 age group, shows that almost 50% of them do occasionally play a game of poker. 1 out of 3 of them plays it for money. Mostly they do this in real life with friends, but 1 out of 3 says he or she also plays poker on the internet. Young people will less often bet money online than in 'real life'. But online they spend more than 10 Euros on this game in 58% of the cases, while offline they spend 5 to 10 Euros in most of the cases.
For us, as a consumer organisation, it is interesting to know how young people pay for these online gambling activities. Contacts we had with Kaboem show that the following two patterns are very common. On certain websites would-be gamblers receive an amount of money (credit) as an introduction: offers, free money, etc. With that credit they can play and increase their credit on the website. Next to that there are a lot of websites where the bets are made with ‘play money’, which is fictitious money. But when a person plays often enough with this money and earns a lot of ‘extra credit’, then he or she can be rewarded with a small amount, for example 10 US cents, in real money. If the player continues to play with that money, it is possible to gradually increase that sum, until finally the game is continued at tables where the bet per game can for instance go up to 5 US dollars.

(Too) easy access and ever more means of payment available to minors of age

In Belgium minors of age cannot participate in bets, lotteries and gambling games. Not in cafés, not in the street, not on television, not via mobile phones ... And of course not via the internet either. In Belgium it is forbidden by law to exploit lotteries and gambling games on the internet. Does this protect the potential player against the risks of online gambling and gaming? No, our laws cannot block the virtual reality of the internet, which easily goes beyond the country’s borders. In the meantime lotteries, gambling and bets have become big business on the internet. It is almost impossible to keep a check on the Belgian rules on the exploitation of gambling on the internet. It is difficult to determine the identity of an online game organiser. The internet offers great anonymity and the virtual and volatile character of the web makes it possible for the organiser to work swiftly and efficiently, which reduces considerably his risk of being caught. Moreover, any person from abroad who has a permit to exploit games can make online gambling games accessible worldwide. As a result, it is almost impossible to impose the Belgian ban. Belgian adults can gamble and play on any of the many foreign websites that are registered in countries where gambling on the internet is allowed (this does not really make it allowed for them too, but they do not risk a legal sanction as an individual player). In theory minors cannot do that, but in practice things are more than just a little bit different.

Are these games really so easy to access? Before we answer that question, we want to underline a finding about gambling offline. An ‘undercover shopping trip' by the CRIOC in 2006 showed that the products of the national lottery were without any reservation sold to minors of age in more than 8 out of every 10 selling points, in spite of the laws that forbid this. The situation online is not any better. Not only does the popularity of poker on the internet increase considerably among young consumers, but the poker industry does also little or nothing to keep them away from the payable online gambling sites, as was clearly proven by a message on the Dutch Planet Internet. Simply by giving a false date of birth, youths were able to gamble. Indeed the age of the minors is generally not verified well or efficiently enough.

With all this there is still another development - closely watched by the consumer organisations - that plays an important role and that is the continuously growing availability of simple means of payment. Young people dispose of a growing number of possibilities to have simple access to online financial transactions, be it payment by mobile phone, payments via the internet by using a normal bank card (instead of requiring a credit card, which is not available to minors) ...

We wish to underline that in principle a distinction must be made between playing a game against payment and playing a game for money (or gambling game). The latter implies a wager of some kind (the participation cost can be in fact a disguised form of wager), a chance to win something in any form whatsoever or to lose the wager, and finally a role for chance (even secondarily) in determining whether a person wins or loses or the amount won or lost. In Belgium gambling games are forbidden for young people under the age of 18. Certain games, for free but also against payment, promise no gain. This activity is accessible to minors. The former is called gambling, the latter is called gaming. But the problem is that we find that the boundaries between these types of games are less and less clear. Examples: casino websites that launch games online that can be played for free, but which invite the player afterwards to also start playing games against payment; websites which present a virtual living environment (like Second Life, a type of e-gaming) and also offer games etc. For minors of age e-gaming as well as e-gambling can cause risks and costs that are difficult for them to master. In the past the CRIOC has filed complaints against a website that presented a so-called educational games to very young children against payment.

How can we restrain the access to money games for minors of age?

In general the CRIOC is for a more coherent legal framework for all the types of gambling and money games. All these games hold a more or less equal risk of addiction and can have disastrous consequences for the minors' financial and social situation, but they fall under different section of the law. There must also be controls on the offer of online gambling games because the current total ban pushes the consumers toward dubious of even suspect foreign websites. A Belgian offer would give guarantees with regard to financial health, transparency etc. The whole offer could also be placed under the supervision of one control organism. The national Gaming Commission must generally obtain more inspection and sanctioning competences. This commission must also be equipped with an independent tool that follows up the evolution of game consumption among minors of age as well as adults with a measuring instrument for the commercial practices of the sellers. The CRIOC has already formulated thorough advice on all these aspects destined for the Gaming Commission.

What are our ideas on the age group of minors here? We can generally say that young consumers and minors of age must be better protected because the barrier for participation is low and there is hardly any control. With that we do not mean just for internet gambling but also for offline gambling and gaming, for instance the purchase of a lotto form in a newspaper kiosk by a minor, which is not allowed legally, or the participation in telephone games on television, games via mobile phones etc. Some of the suggestions that the CRIOC made to the Gaming Commission are:

• People who sell National Lottery products but who do not keep to the prescribed regulations must be sanctioned more efficiently.
• In general the organisers and suppliers of games must guarantee the reliability of the age control of the players. A declaration by the participant alone is not enough. A proposal to remedy this problem is to have the player's age certified by a third person of confidence.
• There must be a strict framework for the means of payment. Minors of age do not have the same judicial capacity to take up responsibility for their financial deeds. They should only be allowed to use new means of payment within reasonable limits. Two examples: fix a weekly maximum amount a minor of age is allowed to spend and provide parents with the technical possibility to block a payment that was made by a minor of age.
• Acknowledge the importance of prevention and realise it in practice. Without waiting for these measures the CRIOC as Belgian Awareness Node already created informative web pages on saferinternet.be about the subject of online games (e-gambling and e-gaming), destined for parents and educators.

Different studies by the CRIOC on minors and gambling are available on www.saferinternet.be (only in Dutch and French). More information? Questions or suggestions? Please send an e-mail to infonl@saferinternet.be (Dutch) and infofr@saferinternet.be (French)