Data Firm Wins Contract To Deliver A National Gambling Self-Exclusion Scheme

The Leeds-based data services firm, The Data Shed, has won a major contract with GAMSTOP, the central scheme that allows people to exclude themselves from online gambling websites, which has led to an extra ten jobs being created at their Leeds office.

Up until early 2018, anyone who wanted to exclude themselves from online gambling had to do so with individual operators. The gambling regulator recognised that this was in no way helpful or desirable situation so the industry came together to find a way to manage exclusions from a single point.

The Data Shed was appointed by GAMSTOP’s key technology partner to helps support and enhance the scheme following its beta launch back in 2018. This scheme helps consumers add themselves to a central exclusion list and prevents them from gambling online.

All British licenced online gambling operators will soon need to be part of the GAMSTOP scheme, once it becomes a licence condition in early 2019.

Ed Thewlis from The Data Shed said:

“Our key challenge was to develop a flexible, secure and scalable platform 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 peak days such as Boxing Day and The Grand National.”

“We’re really proud to be a part of such a worthwhile scheme and of the platform that we’ve built to support it: we recently performed a load test and it coped with 20,000 hits per second. It’s an ultra-secure, cost-effective environment”.

“Our next challenge will be to use our matching algorithm expertise to improve the service to consumers further”.

The CEO of GAMSTOP, Fiona Palmer commented:

“The majority of online gambling customers gamble for fun and within their own limits. However, we recognise there are people who need help to reduce or stop their gambling and GAMSTOP was set up to provide one way of helping by enabling them to self-exclude from multiple operators at one time”.

“We were looking at enhancing the service for the consumer and having met the team at The Data Shed, we were impressed by both their expert knowledge of data as well as their wide cross section of experience. Our work with The Data Shed will enable all self-excluded gamblers to be confident that our enhanced system will be robust and able to provide the service that they need”.

Tom Riordan, the CEO at Leeds City Council commented:

“It’s great to see the growth of another tech company in Leeds, leading to more high-value jobs in the city. Leeds is home to a number of successful tech firms and it seems appropriate that we are using this expertise to work on social responsibility projects such as this”.