The American Gaming Association has released a new informational site directed at both the public and the trade group’s members, designed to promote responsible gaming and support its advocacy goals.
The site, Play Smart From the Start, launched June 23, following 18 months of research and development, according to AGA Senior Vice President of Strategic Communications Joe Maloney. The focus of the effort was to promote the concept of responsible gaming and decouple it from problem gambling. Resources on the site encourage bettors to understand the rules of the game they’re betting on, how the odds work, and how to set boundaries around their spending.
“We wanted to put forward a set of messages that makes every gambler understand that RG [responsible gaming] tools are for everybody, not simply for an individual that might be demonstrating problematic behavior,” Maloney said.
If we violate the public trust with regulatory frameworks, with regulators and with elected officials, they will take away our permission to operate,”
Joe Maloney, American Gaming Association
To develop the site, AGA worked with an outside marketing firm but also coordinated with the AGA board, its dedicated responsible gaming committee, and numerous staff departments. “It cut across our membership and events department. It cut across our governance committees,” Maloney said. “Where we identified the open space through this qualitative and quantitative research exercise was that we weren’t conveying the importance of moving from impulsivity to intentionality when it came to the activity itself.”
Though the site communicates directly to consumers placing bets online and in casinos—it includes checklists, a glossary, a “gaming IQ” quiz and links to additional resources—AGA’s other intended audience is its membership, which is made up of casino resorts, tribal operators, and gambling-industry-adjacent businesses. Though many of them already have established responsible gaming promotions, Maloney said, the new campaign provides a tool for those who don’t and promotes a consistent message.
“Over the short term, the goal [of the campaign] is member company participation with with the campaign, and so ensuring that we are providing enough brand asset versatility where this platform can complement specific member company RG programs, and in some instances, particularly for perhaps some smaller operators or some vendors, suppliers and operators that haven’t formally stood up their own RG campaign, that they can adopt this as their own,” Maloney said.
An extended offshoot of that consistent messaging, Maloney noted, is a stronger advocacy message for AGA, allowing it to communicate to legislators that its industry is committed to integrity and following laws and regulations.
“If we violate the public trust that our individual operators and suppliers and vendors have with regulatory frameworks, with regulators and with elected officials, they will take away our permission to operate,” Maloney said. “We want to be talking about this to regulators, because, above all, we need to demonstrate our commitment to the bettors, to player protection and to player health. And part of that is having regulators understand our research-led approach to developing this framework into something that we know bettors will ultimately become responsive to, if exposed to the messages.”
