We received around 16,000 submissions to our Call for Evidence, and ministers and officials have held hundreds of meetings with a huge range of stakeholders to inform a package of policies which will make our gambling laws fit for the digital age. Our aim is to ensure our gambling regulation meets the challenges and seizes the opportunities which have come with the changes since the Gambling Act 2005 was passed. We launched this Review to take an objective, comprehensive look at the evidence. Likewise, our understanding of gambling-related harms and gambling disorder has developed enormously over recent years. Land-based gambling also finds itself in a very different place in light of these changes, with some of the assumptions which prevailed 18 years ago looking increasingly outdated. Newly available data and technology can both increase risks to players and facilitate innovative protections.
Multinational tech businesses now provide gambling services which customers can engage with from almost anywhere and at any time of day or night. Few who were designing policy in the early 2000s could have foreseen the nature and extent of the changes which have since reshaped our society, the economy and this sector. The gambling landscape has changed significantly since 2005.
