Come Together

The founding of the National Center for Responsible Gaming (now the International Center, ICRG) was the most important thing that Frank Fahrenkopf did as CEO of the American Gaming Association.

Fahrenkopf had seen the tobacco industry taken before Congress. He watched the CEOs of those big companies deny that their product was harmful to their customers, despite studies and research that showed otherwise.

Fahrenkopf didn’t want his industry to endure the same disgrace, but there were no credible studies, no organizations that could gauge the possible harm that gaming did to its customers. At that time, most gaming executives didn’t believe the damage was that huge, but Fahrenkopf wanted the data to back up these opinions.

So the ICRG was set up more than 30 years ago to do research funded by the industry, but in such a way that the industry had no control over the results. It was led by Dr. Howard Shaffer, a noted researcher and director of the Division on Addiction at the Cambridge Health Alliance, a Harvard Medical School teaching hospital. Shaffer’s reputation was stellar, and there was no way he would let the industry direct or even influence the research. Fahrenkopf was taking a gamble that what we all believed was true—that only a small percentage of gamblers were problem gamblers.

At the same time, Fahrenkopf stressed that if even one person was harmed by gambling, that was one person too many, and he wanted to find ways to treat the people who are impacted negatively. And because there was little peer-reviewed research done at that time, he wanted answers.

The formation of the ICRG was very timely, as less than two years later Congress created the National Gaming Impact Study Commission. It produced a report that supported what the industry had believed—that less than 2 percent of people are vulnerable to compulsive gambling. That study was done more than 25 years ago, and it has been repeated many times over by different organizations with similar results. So Fahrenkopf’s gamble paid off.

Today, however, we have many organizations trying to do the same work as the ICRG has accomplished, but with less success. The atmosphere around responsible gaming is becoming tense. Every gaming company has a director of responsible gaming and entire teams devoted to preventing problem gamblers from frequenting their casinos and/or web platforms. Every state has a problem gambling group—mostly funded by the industry, through fines and/or fees.

I recently had the opportunity to observe a responsible gaming seminar for college gaming law students, held by one of the largest gaming companies in the world. I was impressed with the information that they were presenting, but I was told not to quote anything from the session because the information was proprietary.

That seems to be the attitude of many of these organizations. They think they’ve got the secret to solving the problem gambling paradox and are hesitant to share that information. This shouldn’t be a competition. This should be a cooperative venture.

I’m not sure anyone has the full answer, but I am sure that everyone has a piece of the answer. And the only way forward is to share information openly and let everyone in on the “secret.”

The ICRG conference held every year alongside G2E is a platform for researchers to present their studies. It’s a time when everyone can come together and reveal what they know—and even what they don’t know, because that can be an avenue to discover more pieces of the puzzle.

Why can’t the ICRG become a clearinghouse for the best and the brightest of all problem gambling research? The organization recently had a change in leadership. Art Paikowsky, who had been president of the ICRG for the past four years and had truly transformed its operations, will be succeeded by Michael Soll, the leader of The Innovation Group, who will step away from that organization to become president of the ICRG. Soll is an industry veteran who knows how the industry works and can best direct an effort to really address the issue of problem gambling.

Everyone has the same goal: to eradicate as best we can the threat our product can present to a very small minority of people. Let’s all cooperate so we can reach that goal as soon as possible.