Online gambling has increased the accessibility and range of gambling products available to people all over the world. This trend has been particularly noticeable in the UK. Cryptocurrency-based gambling is a new, largely unregulated, way to gamble online, which uses mostly anonymous blockchain-based technologies, such as Bitcoin. The present research investigates consumer protection features of 40 frequently visited cryptocurrency-based online gambling operators. Overall, 22 operators allowed access from the UK, whilst 18 operators could only be accessed via a Virtual Private Network (VPN). Results revealed significant failings in the account registration process, as none of the operators verified the identity of new users, and 35 percent of operators required only an email or no information at all for signup. Overall, 37.5 percent of operators offered no safer gambling tools and a further 20 percent offered only one. Twenty-two out of 34 operators continued to email promotional material after being informed of a user’s impaired control when gambling. Less than half of the analysed operators held a valid licence, and none of the operators with an available deposit page required identity verification before enabling deposits. These results highlight the need for greater policy and research attention towards cryptocurrency-based online gambling.

The gamblification of UK football has resulted in a proliferation of in-game marketing associated with gambling and gambling-like products such as cryptocurrencies and financial trading apps. The English Premier League (EPL) has in response banned gambling logos on shirt-fronts from 2026 onward. But this ban does not affect other types of marketing for gambling (e.g., sleeves and pitch-side hoardings), nor gambling-like products. This study therefore aimed to assess the ban’s implied overall reduction of different types of marketing exposure. We performed a frequency analysis of relevant logos in the EPL associated with gambling, cryptocurrency, and financial trading across 10 broadcasts from the 2022/23 EPL season. For each relevant logo, we coded: the marketed product, the associated brand, the number of individual logos, logo location, logo duration, and whether harm-reduction content was present. There were 20,941 relevant logos across the 10 broadcasts, of which 13,427 (64.1%) were for gambling only, 2,236 (10.7%) were for both gambling and cryptocurrency, 2,014 (9.6%) were for cryptocurrency only, 2,068 (9.9%) were for both cryptocurrency and financial trading, and 1,196 (5.7%) were for financial trading only. There were 1,075 shirt-front gambling-associated logos, representing 6.9% of all gambling-associated logos, and 5.1% of all logos combined. Pitch-side hoardings were the most frequent marketing location (52.3%), and 3.4% of logos contained harm-reduction content. Brand logos associated with gambling, cryptocurrency, and financial trading are common within EPL broadcasts. Approximately 1 in 20 gambling and gambling-like logos are subject to the EPL’s voluntary ban on shirt-front gambling sponsorship.

In commercial gambling, the odds of winning are against the gambler. Roulette is a good game to demonstrate this principle with. A roulette wheel has the numbers from 1 – 36 that the wheel can land on, and a successful stake of £1 on one of these numbers will pay-off £36 (including the return of the stake). However, a European roulette wheel has an extra number, zero, which the wheel can also land on (and which can also be bet on). This means that a bet on any specific number will only win 1 in 37 times on average, resulting in an average loss of 2.7% of all money staked. This average loss for the gambler is known as the house edge. American roulette has a second zero (the double zero), but the payoffs are the same. These further reduced odds of winning in American roulette translate into a higher house edge of 5.3%, making this a less attractive gambling product. This shows how the house edge can be compared across gambling products, which along with the total amount bet, predicts gamblers’ average losses. Since these losses lead to harm, some economists have proposed zero house-edge games as a theoretical harm reduction approach. But these games are not just a theoretical possibility, as at least three significant online operators have either provided or promised to provide these games. This article reviews this short history of zero house-edge games, while also proposing an alternative model for how they could be commercially provided.