This story was published more than 6 years ago.
Internet casino Tivoli has been accused of profiting off gambling addicts, after a punter's son sent a letter to the casino's CEO stating that his father played there and that there was no control system in place to keep his father from betting a large sum of money.
The issue stems from an incident where a man who has been called an alcoholic who was also depressed lost more than 500,000 kroner at Tivoli. The incident came over a two month period, and saw no contact made between the casino and the gambler, despite him exhibiting risky betting behaviors. The punter's son asks why there is no control system in place, like Tivoli competitor Danske Spil has.
The letter in part read: "Why is there no alert system that my father in November and December 2015 played for a total of 500,000 kroner. Sick people cannot stick to a controlled maximum number of games per day, week or month. They cannot stop. And you know that."
In response, Tivoli CEO Lars Liebst said that he wondered if the son would have written the letter had the addicted gambler won the same amount that he lost, and pointed out that the gambler was of the legal age to place bets over the internet, and thus was responsible for his choices.
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Comments
I have to say that the response of the CEO is a bad decision. At the very least it is poor PR, and at the most it shows the casino really doesn't care about the well-being of their customers.
They should go back to the drawing board on this one and come up with some real policy changes.
I think the attempted strategy was to shift the blame from the casino to the player, for not having the capacity to quit. However, regulations should still be implemented to warn players about the amount they put in. After all, you want to keep your players, not drain them dry (at least I hope!)
Astonishing response from the CEO, what a total lack of sympathy. While there has to be some element of personal responsibility the whole point of addiction is that the person lacks the control and/or responsibility to simply stop and he knows that. If that were not so we could end all drug, alcohol, internet, gambling, coffee, smoking, exercise, food, sex, video game, texting and any other addictions by just telling everybody to stop.
That is why so many regulated casinos have responsibly gambling policies and limit controls in place. I am fairly sure they used to have these before when it was open to players from around the world, but these days it is a Danish only casino so I can't tell for sure. There is also a problem gambling self exclusion register available in Denmark so if the player has not used that service then its up to the casino to detect problem behaviour. If the casino is allowed to operate without detection systems then it is a serious failure of the Danish regulator.
sharpe
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I agree that the response from CEO wasn't good at all. They should have just closed this guys' account.
Yes it seems heartless from the CEO's side and I'm agreed that will be a bad publicity for the casino, there are all kind of people out there and some of them not having full control of their emotions or thoughts so there's have to be more understanding and maybe even compassion from casino's side.
I just think that even if that was what the CEO thought, he should have been clever enough to not say it out loud.