The Data Shed in Leeds to continue working with gambling exclusion scheme

Anna Sutton, CEO of The Data Shed in Leeds, is glad that the company gets to play a role in the tech for good space.

GAMSTOP is a free service that allows consumers to exclude themselves from gambling websites.

Consumers can choose to restrict themselves from all UK-licensed online gambling sites for a minimum period of either six months, a year or five years.

The Data Shed, which is based in Leeds, was first appointed in June 2018 as GAMSTOP’s key technology partner to support and enhance the scheme.

The Data Shed has enabled the service to cope with sporting peaks such as Boxing Day and the Grand National when the platform handled over 20,000 hits per second.

Anna Sutton, CEO and co-founder of The Data Shed, said: “We’re really pleased about our contract extension with GAMSTOP. We’re extremely proud of the work we’ve done to date to help get the service accepted into licence conditions for the whole industry.

“We’ve proven that our service is secure and flexible enough to allow operators to verify every registration and login against the exclusion register, without impacting the performance of operator services. This is particularly crucial on the busiest days on the sporting calendar.”

It became a requirement for all British online operators to be integrated with GAMSTOP as a condition of their Gambling Commission licence on March 31.

This means that for the first time, the entire British online-gambling market will be covered by GAMSTOP, with the result that any individual who registers with the scheme will be able to self-exclude themselves from all online gambling sites registered in Great Britain.

Ms Sutton said: “The scheme is an important self-protection mechanism for over 130,000 people and it’s amazing to be part of something that uses tech and data for good.

“Often, tech is seen as a way of simply increasing commercialism and profitability, but in this case it’s aimed entirely at empowering people to protect and help themselves.

“It feels great for The Data Shed to be a big part of that, and the extension of the contract is a really positive reflection of our successful partnership with GAMSTOP.”