Data Science: What Can It Bring to GamStop?
Advancement in the current day digital environment is majorly driven by data extraction and using it to predict an outcome or a situation. This is more or less known to every soul today. The rapid growth of the gambling industry is also an example of how data can be used in ways to make a particular industry flourish. The United Kingdom Gambling Commission ordered all the operators registered under the UK to make progress in certain Digital spaces from October 2019 to heighten their standards of player safety.
The scientists looked after aspects like customer interaction, budget advertisement, and other such markers. Determination of certain standards is quite straightforward but recognition of these aspects can be done only by adopting strictly academic approaches like the application of core data science. Considering the recent services provided by these online casino operators, keeping a track of the database is what keeps the actions rolling.
For example, in order to block casino sites, collection of data is indispensable otherwise the entire system will experience a crash. The same theory is applicable for meeting the requirements of the protection of the operators themselves. For various legal formalities, this data can be stored by UKGC which is again useful for resolving technical issues.
About the Type of Data Collected by GamStop
Firstly, the kind of data that is collected consists of the basic information of customers such as name, phone number, email address, date of birth, and even residential address at times. But in most cases, GamStop aims to collect more data for improving their services. Sure the customer service executives play a huge part as they extract additional details using the context of various purposes. The call recordings serve as evidence in support of the collected data. A massive amount of it is extracted from the operators by bigger corporations of the same industry. However, as GamStop doesn’t cover these online casinos that aren’t licensed by UKGC, the British Commission cannot force them to send all the details of registered customers.
One of the most important steps for these organizations is to verify the data collected in order to ensure accuracy. Inauthentic data may affect the quality of services provided. Verification can either be done using the TransUnion database where the data collected are simply stored at a database. The goal is to obtain perfectly accurate data that will be stored for a long period of time for further use. Data can also be obtained from independent owners to carry out verification which will finally yield the closest results to the accurate details.
How Data Science can Add in detecting a Problematic Gambler
There are certain markers that can classify users according to four different categories like,
- Frequency, which deals with the number of sessions played during a particular span of time;
- Variability, which deals with the change in the gambling behavior of the particular player;
- Intensity, which is the time spent and bets placed in a minute of a total session of a played;
- Trajectory, that is the change of behavior according to the data over time according to the three main markers stated above.
Using these markers of harm often helps in building protection for players. Another major factor that contributes to it is the determination of players who are often searching for sources to escape the GameStop ban. A number of machine learning models are put into use in order to predict the behavioural pattern of the demographics as well as individual players. These data help form the algorithm.
The protection of players is single-handedly determined by the data extracted. Although there are several blind spots that should be acknowledged and can be categorized into two sections. This is related to the acknowledgement of problematic gambling behaviour. The fact that not every player in need of self-exclusion will ultimately opt for self-exclusion and not every player opting for self-exclusion has addiction issues with gambling. There might be cases where a person is facing major losses in the financial sector and still consistently choosing to gamble away their money.
Effects of using Data Science in GamStop
There are 2 major outcomes of the steps which can be recorded as
- People can opt for the GamStop self-exclusion team as a voluntary step to get over their gambling addiction.
- The 24 hours cooling-off period is the preliminary step towards the detection of any sign of addictive gambling.
The amount of data stored by GamStop is not always the most desirable outcome but considering how helpful it is towards the detection of problematic gambling, it is almost acceptable to some extent. The latest compliance with the Data Shed makes it legal for GamStop to extract data from operators in the UK and keep it for as long as 14 years!
