The Gambling Commission has updated its data on nationwide bingo participation following intervention from the Bingo Association, with the trade body working alongside the regulator after recognising discrepancies between its own visitor figures and those recorded in the GSGB. The rectifications come at a time when the credibility of the much maligned GSGB is under vigorous attack with challenges being made to both its trustworthiness and misleading steers. This current development does little to help confidence in the GSGB.
The Gambling Commission has updated its data on UK bingo participation following a year-long collaboration with the Bingo Association to determine the cause of discrepancies between the trade body’s visitor figures and those suggested by the GSGB.
The BA approached the regulator’s Research and Statistics team after the first wave of results were published, and pushed for the introduction of a new question on the survey to deliver clearer data on the number of ways and locations in which people play bingo.
“We now have three waves of data under our belt, and the findings illustrate the variety of places where people play bingo,” reported senior research and statistics analyst Amandeep Manku.
“We also found the GSGB estimates of those people playing bingo in traditional bingo clubs (1.2 percent) much more closely aligned with the Bingo Association’s own estimates calculated from admissions data into those premises (1.0 percent.)”
The regulator will continue to build its sample of respondents over the coming waves, retaining the bingo-specific question to better understand how people engage with the sector.
“The Bingo Association are fortunate that they collect detailed industry data which allowed them to cross reference and subsequently question findings from the GSGB regarding participation rates for bingo,” said BA CEO Miles Baron.
“The Bingo Association are grateful for the opportunity to input an additional survey question into the GSGB in an attempt to understand the differences. We now have more clarity on why there are differences, although there are further questions to explore once there is a bigger sample size.”
Survey failures, a Commission in denial and an industry sector to the rescue … is it time to bury the GSGB survey for good?
The Bingo Association’s tenacious response to the gaping holes in the Commission’s GSGB data model may be glossed over by the regulator as part of the process of building a reliable participation survey, but few will be fooled by their efforts to save face.
The GSGB has been promoted by the Commission as a beacon of statistical analysis and the body has spent three years aggressively dismissing all and any claims that the survey is flawed.
Independent analysts appointed by the regulator savaged the GSGB, academics and the Office for National Statistics slapped its methodology down, industry experts panned it, and even the idiot class led proudly by the likes of Coinslot have identified fundamental failings in both the conclusions and the pitching of the GSGB summaries.
But none have dented the arrogant portrayal of the Commission’s GSGB better than the Bingo Association whose accurate data drawn from operators has served to batter trust in the accuracy of the regulator’s survey.
Already under fire for allegedly misleading policymakers by misrepresenting its GSGB findings, this latest twist of the Bingo Association rescuing the GSGB data only serves to reinforce the case that the Commission’s model survey is, and never was, fit for purpose.
