Do bookmaker loyalty-programmes cause problem gambling?

A popular conception of bookmaker loyalty programmes is that they lock in heavy punters to a single brand and entice them into ever greater spending there. By implication they cause problem gambling. Evidence from the retail and travel sectors shows however that loyalty schemes do not segment the market in this way. With competing schemes in place, the heaviest category users remain distributed across rival brands and their patronage remains stable. As yet, few consumer-behaviour studies have explicitly examined membership loyalty across the gambling industry. We report here on the behavioural outcomes of bookmaker loyalty programmes, extending two empirical generalisations that predict split-loyal, habitual consumer choice behaviour. Drawing on large scale social research datasets we conduct brand-user profiling and duplication of purchase analysis to show that the behaviour of scheme members is already established and therefore predictable – but it isn’t loyal, either to brands or gambling formats. The criticism of loyalty programmes is that they exploit gamblers, but the evidence suggests exactly the reverse. Nevertheless, problem gambling is a serious social harm affecting just under one percent of people aged 16+. The findings suggest that most of this behaviour is already recorded in bookmaker loyalty data which could be better used to shape interventions