Building BetBlocker: Duncan Garvie Discusses Free Gambling Blocking Software and Industry Support

Hello Duncan, nice to meet you. How are you? First of all, thank you for taking the time for this interview. We’re excited to learn more about your project, BetBlocker, and to get to know you as the visionary behind it. Let’s get started.

Q: How did your career in this field begin? What were you involved in before BetBlocker?

A: It’s tough to pinpoint exactly where my involvement in this field began. It was more of a chain of decisions/events than a single point in time. I have a background in mathematics, having both studied Pure Mathematics at university and taught secondary school mathematics for several years.

During my time training as a teacher I read the book Bringing Down the House by Ben Mezrich. I ended up becoming very proficient at counting cards and doing a number of trips to the USA to work with various people on legal advantage play projects during the holidays. That was really my entry point into the gambling sector.

When I decided to leave teaching, I used the money I’d made to found ThePOGG.com, an online casino reviews service focusing on protecting players from rogue operators and calling out questionable practices in the sector. ThePOGG included a player complaint service.

Around 2015, the UKGC introduced an Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) requirement, stipulating that all licensees had to provide their players with a regulator approved ADR service to manage disputes that arose. The MGA followed suit, with the same requirements in 2018. Under my leadership, ThePOGG was the only affiliate based complaint management service to receive approval from these regulators to manage complaints on behalf of the regulator.

And it was ThePOGG that was the genesis of BetBlocker.

Q: You worked on the THEPOGG project before, where the main focus was complaint management. Is that when you decided to create BetBlocker? Why?

A: ThePOGG’s focus was on managing complaints. Whilst working on ThePOGG and dealing with significant volumes of cases relating to gambling harm I could see the need for free blocking software. We were looking to signpost support services for those complainants impacted by gambling harms and when I looked at the blocking softwares that were available on the market, they were all subscription based.

We were regularly dealing with people who were in very tough financial situations. People who didn’t know how they were going to pay for next month’s rent. Or how they were going to put food on the table for their children. Telling them that they had to pay to get help seemed to both exacerbate that financial distress and ensure that the people who most desperately needed the help would be the people who were least likely to be able to access it. So we decided to set-up BetBlocker, blocking software that we would distribute freely.

A couple of years later BetBlocker was so popular that the business couldn’t afford to sustain it any longer. We were faced with some tough decisions. We could close it down, meaning that all our users would lose the support they relied on. We could start charging for it, but that would be entirely contrary to why we started the project. These weren’t good options for our users. So instead we broke BetBlocker off from the business and registered it as a charity in its own right, and have been providing the service as a charity ever since.

I subsequently sold ThePOGG.com, which has been rebranded as CasinoReviews.com. I’ve stayed on with the business and act as the Head of ADR Services for CasinoReviews. And I continue to act as the Managing Trustee for BetBlocker on a voluntary basis, overseeing the operation of BetBlocker in my free time.

Q: You said you are now working on an ADR system at Blexr and plan to get approval to function as an Alternative Dispute Resolution service to function within a number of regulatory systems. Can you tell more about this and your plans at Blexr?

A: That’s correct. Since Blexr bought and rebranded ThePOGG, we’ve rebuilt and redeveloped the complaint management service to make it more user friendly. We’ve already been approved by the Consumer Affairs Council in Malta, meaning that we can now represent Malta Gaming Authority (MGA) licensees officially, managing complaints on behalf of the regulator.

We currently represent approximately 25% of all MGA licensed gambling websites (~300 gambling operators), we are the only affiliate based complaint management service to be approved by any regulator to act as an ADR, and we are the only ADR provider to offer our services free of charge to licensees (all ADRs are free for complainants but other ADRs charge licensees for the service).

CasinoReviews.com is in the process of seeking approval from the UK Gambling Commission to function as an ADR for the UKGC license and will be seeking similar approvals within any licensing jurisdiction that implements an ADR system.

We strongly believe that outcomes for players in dispute situations can be significantly improved with the implementation of a robustly regulated ADR system and would encourage any regulator that is serious about protecting consumer rights to consider ADR as an option for dealing with their complaint caseload.

Q: You’ve once mentioned, “I take greater pride in BetBlocker than any other achievement in my life and can passionately discuss this project with anyone interested.” Did you feel this way from the very beginning, or did this pride develop as the project succeeded?

A: BetBlocker has been a passion project for me from the very beginning. ThePOGG was set-up to help protect players and BetBlocker was an extension of that goal. But that’s not to say that it’s been without its frustrations. The early development of the app was replete with bugs and errors that were challenging and costly to overcome. It wasn’t until a year or so in that we started to get to the point where we were effectively impacting lives.

Alongside this, BetBlocker can be a bit of a bubble in terms of our team knowing how it’s impacting our users. One of the greatest strengths of BetBlocker is that the service can be used anonymously. We don’t know who our users are or how to contact them. This is important because gambling harm often comes with feelings of shame and stigmatisation. By allowing users to use the service anonymously we remove that barrier.

On the other hand though, it’s uncommon for us to ever hear from our users unless there’s been a technical issue and those users are generally frustrated.

For the first four years of the operation, I personally managed the user support contacts for BetBlocker. It was an emotionally powerful undertaking. While most contacts are relating to technical issues, occasionally we do get thank you notes. We’ve had everything from multi-page letters detailing someone’s experience and expressing how the app has impacted their life, to a simple email that just says “Thank you. You’ve saved my marriage.” without even providing a name.

But even outside of the thank you communications, the people contacting us for technical support can give insight into our impact. Many of these people are at a point of crisis. They’re panicking and that comes through in the way they interact with support when BetBlocker hasn’t worked as they expected. Quite often, by speaking to these people, working with them to resolve the issue, and listening to them, it shifts from an aggressive interaction to a positive one, and the person will share what’s happened with us.

It is in the contacts with support that we actually gain some visibility, beyond a number, of the impact that BetBlocker is having on the lives of our users. And, for me, I find it extremely humbling to realise that something we’ve built is positively impacting so many lives.

Q: BetBlocker is a charity organization. How do you fund your operations? Who are your main donors or sponsors?

A: BetBlocker is primarily funded by donations from the industry or partnership agreements to achieve specific goals via 3rd party agencies like GambleAware.

While many charities are funded by the people that use their services, gambling addiction presents a unique challenge on this front, as the people experiencing gambling harm generally share one thing in common: they are struggling financially.

For this reason, we don’t prioritise encouraging our users to donate. We’d rather see our users keep their money in their pocket to help rebuild their lives. That means that we have to look for funding elsewhere to support the project.

Markets like the UK are fantastic, where there’s a mature funding system and we can work with organisations like GambleAware to support our efforts to deliver support to the users that need our service. However we find it just as positive to see operators step-up to the plate and ensure harm minimisation projects like our own are appropriately funded where government led structures don’t exist.

We work with some of the biggest names in the industry: Entain, Betway, LeoVegas, BetVictor, Draftkings, Playtech, Aristocrat, Bally’s and many many more. It’s really encouraging to see how enthusiastically the sector has rallied behind a tool that is delivering support to tens of thousands of people every day.

Q: Can you tell us about your team? How many people are involved in running BetBlocker smoothly? With advancements in AI, have you been able to optimize processes and potentially reduce the need for a larger workforce?

A: Our team is comparatively tiny compared to a service that supports tens of thousands of vulnerable people every day.

At the present time all of my work for BetBlocker is done on a voluntary basis. That means in my free time. And that also means that if you see me at a conference manning a BetBlocker stand, I’ve taken holidays from my work to be there.

We have Pedro Romero who is our Chief of Safer Gambling Partnerships. Alongside working for BetBlocker, he’s currently studying for his PhD in the treatment of gambling addiction at the University of Gibraltar. He attends a lot of conferences for us, speaks on a lot of panels and helps to build the relationships that ensure that BetBlocker has sufficient funding to deliver the support our users need.

We have our Head of User Support, John, who manages all user interactions and helps out with some conferences.

And we have our development team who are constantly working to update and maintain the code for the app.

With regard to AI, whilst we have had some offers to use AI to assist with user support, it’s critical to our service to maintain human interactions on this front. The most common way for us to identify bugs or loopholes in our protection is via user interactions. A user reporting an issue and our team investigating it. So, no matter how good the AI system right now, we don’t want to automate our user support systems.

However, we have partnered with a firm using AI to identify new gambling websites, faster. Blask’s work in this area has made a significant difference to how quickly we can detect and block new operators. So whilst AI hasn’t yet reduced our workforce, it has significantly improved the quality of service that we provide.

Q: How would you describe your mission? What are the main goals of your organization?

A: First and foremost, we want to ensure that free blocking software is available everywhere, to everyone who needs it. Blocking software does not have to cost the world to deliver free to the people that need it. In fact it is a tiny drop in the ocean for an industry that’s worth hundreds of billions every year.

But beyond that, we want to change the narrative around responsible gambling. Responsible gambling is not what you do after you feel that you might have an issue. That’s crisis management. Responsible gambling is what every player should do every day. Think about their play and engage with the tools that are available to help manage their gambling. In exactly the same way that you fasten your seat belt before you drive your car.

And to that end we’ve designed BetBlocker to have a second mode of functioning, our Calendaring mode, which allows users to plan ahead and select when they’d like their block to switch on. This allows our users to plan and block during periods of known vulnerability.

Right now this functions by day, but we have plans to upgrade this feature to allow users to block by hours in the very near future and we want to build a timer feature sometime in the next 12 months.

Players need to start thinking of responsible gambling as what we all do any time we play, rather than as what people who have experienced a problem do.

Q: Do you have any statistical data on problematic gamblers by country or region that you could share with us?

A: Because BetBlocker’s designed to allow people to use it anonymously, we collect very limited information on our users beyond basic Google Analytics data. So there’s not much in the way of data we can share at the present time.

What I can tell you is that each time we translate BetBlocker into a new language we see browser traffic set to that language increase between 4-10x and that over the course of this year we have been averaging an increase of an additional 55 devices connected to our servers every single day.

Q: Have you ever had a situation where a casino requested the inclusion of a player?

A: We cannot opt anyone into BetBlocker. Nobody can. The only way to activate a BetBlocker exclusion is on the device that you want to block.

We do occasionally get users contacting us to remove their restriction, claiming that someone set it up on their device without their permission, but our answer to that has to be that the security of their device is their responsibility and if someone has had access to their device and set-up an exclusion, we have to assume that they had permission to do so.

Q: Can you describe BetBlocker’s role in the gambling market? How do you interact with online casinos and other industry players?

A: That’s a big question. We occupy a number of different roles.

With gambling operators, we spend a lot of time educating their teams as to how BetBlocker works and the best ways to signpost the services that we make available. It’s really important for us to maintain an effective channel of communication with our industry partners as they are our primary source of funding, but more importantly, they are the coal face when it comes to interacting with people experiencing gambling harm. Gambling operators are the front line, they will often be able to identify, even before the player has, that high risk behaviour is starting to take place. If we want to reach the players that most need our help, it’s critical that we work with gambling operators and encourage them to prompt these users to consider BetBlocker at the right time.

We cooperate with conference organisers who will provide us with stands and ask our team to speak on panels discussing issues surrounding the minimisation of gambling harm in the sector. This is beneficial for the conference who are looking to promote the industry as responsible and safe and helps us raise our profile within the sector, ensuring that the people who make decisions about which charities they want to support are aware of the work we do.

We partner with other charities and organisations that are working to minimise gambling harms in a variety of ways, sometimes as simplistic as advancing the same message for press stories. However, we also work with these groups to deliver localised support to the people that they serve. Currently working in this fashion with organisations in Brazil and Zambia to translate BetBlocker to be more accessible to their local populations.

We work with regulators to help support the development of policies that will best protect consumers in the markets they oversee. And we support a number of regulatory authorities to quantify and restrict the black markets.

We even work with some affiliate marketing sites who are looking to promote BetBlocker. Our recent partnership with Casino.Guru is a great example of this. Their Global Self-Exclusion initiative is perfectly aligned with the objectives of BetBlocker and they have a huge audience.

Q: On a personal note, do you enjoy casino games or have you ever played them? What is your personal attitude towards gambling and betting?

A: I used to travel the world playing casino games. For a number of years, most of my free time was spent in casinos, usually sitting at a blackjack table, but I’ve had plenty of reasons to play other games.

My personal view on gambling is fairly agnostic. Overall I don’t necessarily think that gambling is a positive for society but I strongly believe, based on years of observing human behaviour in this area, that banning it does not remove the demand for it. All that happens is that players migrate to the black market, who are entirely unregulated and completely disregard the fact that they’re marketing a product that can cause substantial harm.

That being the case, I would consider myself pro-regulated gambling. But I would put a caveat on that too. Unless we can legitimately restrict the black market, and presently we’re nowhere near achieving this objective, effective regulation has to be balanced in its approach so that it doesn’t inconvenience consumers, or dilute the experience that consumers want to the point where they look outside of the regulated markets. It’s understandable that regulators want to appear tough on the gambling market, but regulation should be seeking to achieve the best outcomes for consumers, not simply creating headlines that reflect positively on the regulator.

Having managed hundreds of claims against black market operators, the worst case scenario, in my opinion, is driving large numbers of consumers to these businesses. At best, the black market rips off players. At worst it destroys lives.

Q: What does a typical day look like for you, and what are your hobbies?

A: My day-to-day life is very busy.

I’ll start my week on a Sunday, when I’ll do a complete review of all of the complaints currently open at CasinoReviews.com. A weekend day is best for this as I don’t exercise and the lack of interruptions allows me to gain momentum that’s not possible on other days.

During the week I exercise in the mornings and tend to try and do more of my hours for CasinoReviews earlier in the week. In the evenings I’ll try to catch-up on work for BetBlocker. Later in the week I’ll focus more on BetBlocker work, writing funding proposals, regulatory reporting, arranging travel for conferences and preparing social media posts.

Saturday I try to catch-up on some house work and find a few hours in the afternoon/evening to sit and watch a film with my wife.

Honestly, between a challenging job and running BetBlocker, I don’t have any time for hobbies right now. But in years gone by, when I wasn’t so time challenged, I used to enjoy building Lego.