AGA Completes Responsible Gaming Education Week Campaign
The American Gaming Association (AGA) has been around since 1994 and focuses on lobbying, educating and promoting the gaming industry in America. Every year, the AGA carries out a responsible gambling week campaign to promote safe gambling practices across the country.
RGEW – Sep 19 to 25
The AGA will run its 2021 Responsible Gaming Education Week (RGEW) campaign from Sep 19 to 25. This will be the 24th edition of the RGEW and arguably the most important RGEW campaign that the AGA has run in all these years.
The U.S gaming market (casino and sports betting) is bigger than ever before and is poised to continue to grow rapidly in the next couple of years as more states legalize and expand into sports betting and online gaming.
The AGA looks to showcase its commitment to responsible gambling initiatives each year through this seven day campaign that looks to upgrade employee training programs, educate customers on gaming literacy, encourage transparency within the industry and work with stakeholders in the industry to boost their responsible gambling initiatives.
The AGA will hold a number of virtual events during RGEW that will encourage responsible gambling. Some of the topics being discussed include Who’s Responsible for Gambling?, Consumers First: Centralizing RG initiatives for the U.S Mobile Wagering Marketplace; and Responsible Marketing Code for Wagering Training.
A big emphasis this week will be on the growing sports betting market in America. The theme for RGEW is “Have a Game Plan, Bet Responsibly”.
Problem Gambling Concerns
The National Council on Problem Gambling which has been around for 49 years has published a report which shows that 1 percent of Americans have significant problem gambling issues while another 3 percent have moderate to mild problem gambling issues.
Those numbers looks small when you look at it in percentage form but get a lot more serious when you break it down. Over 3 million Americans have serious problem gambling issues while another 9 million have mild to moderate problem gambling issues. With the gambling and betting market growing so rapidly, these numbers are bound to go up if problem gambling is not taking seriously.
The AGA spends millions of dollars each year to promote responsible gambling initiatives. Gaming and betting operators also continue to make large donations to fund these responsible gambling initiatives.
Cait DeBaun, vice president for the AGA said one of the big concerns right now is that teenagers and young adults are now at more risk to become problem gamblers and the AGA is looking at rolling out initiatives to do more to protect this demographic from gambling harm.