New research funded by the statutory levy reveals that existing safer gambling tools are structurally ill-equipped to support people harmed by someone else’s gambling behaviour.
The Gambling Commission conducted the study by gathering testimony from 25 adults across Great Britain who had all experienced adverse effects from another person’s gambling within the past 12 months.
A central finding is that affected others tend to recognise the damage being done to them only at a very late stage, often once harms have already escalated significantly.
Interviews found that safer gambling tools are “encountered almost exclusively at crisis point by the affected other,” highlighting a structural flaw in how intervention frameworks are designed.
Because safer gambling tools require the person gambling to initiate and maintain them, they are not well set-up to accommodate those caught in the fallout of another person’s harmful gambling.
The Gambling Survey for Great Britain estimates that around 2.7% of British adults score eight or more on the Problem Gambling Severity Index, indicating they have experienced adverse consequences from their own gambling activity.
A further 9% of the entire British adult population fall into the category of affected other, with more than a quarter of those having experienced at least one severe consequence, defined as relationship breakdown, significant financial loss, or exposure to violence or abuse.
Despite the scale of these consequences, fewer than one in five affected others seek any form of support, according to the Gambling Survey for Great Britain 2024.
The increasing accessibility of online gambling and its frictionless user experience has made it far harder for those around a problem gambler to spot warning signs early.
One participant described how their partner’s gambling was initially disguised: “She said it was just a game from the App Store – obviously it wasn’t. It was all very, very secretive.”
This invisibility creates what the research describes as a state of “sustained hypervigilance,” concealing harms until they have compounded across multiple areas of a person’s life.
Health was the most frequently reported domain of harm, followed by relationships and financial situation, consistent with previous Gambling Survey for Great Britain findings.
Partners of those who gamble tend to sustain the most indirect harm, given their physical proximity, shared finances, and the mental burden of constant vigilance over their loved one’s behaviour.
Gambling advertising emerged as a “consistent and unprompted theme across interviews,” with one male partner of a gambler describing adverts as “inescapable.”
He elaborated further, saying: “It feels like from every direction, it’s on every screen and then we got one through the post from Gala Bingo, now they’re posting it to our house!”
Others described frustration at promotional offers, bonuses and pop-ups that continued to appear even after mitigation measures had been put in place.
Following the government’s introduction of the statutory levy, the Gambling Commission identified six research priorities and committed them to writing to provide direction amid any funding uncertainty.
This study falls under the regulator’s “Gambling-related harm and vulnerability” theme, with both its Lived Experience Advisory Panel and Consumer Voice research programme contributing to the process.
Humankind Research, one of four contracted partners supporting the Consumer Voice programme, was specifically commissioned to carry out these qualitative interviews given its focus on hard-to-reach audiences.
A companion report drawing from the same set of interviews is due in the coming months, exploring what the findings mean for support services, treatment providers, and the broader support ecosystem.
