I have a problem, big personal problem! I’m a person who likes to make decisions based on facts. I haven’t understood how someone can trust on decision-making process where they haven’t used correct information. But now, someone could say finally, I have realized that it is not always clear what the facts are. “The truth” could be different for me than for the other person.
It has been obvious that there are almost always lack of information and we have to make decisions without all facts. We are living in the middle of chaos and we should accept that. But I still believe that right information will help you to make better decisions and that’s why you should try to collect as much facts as possible.
My company made quite big report for one of our customers. We needed there lots of information about different countries and market developments. As always, I made a list of statistics and other information which we should have before writing the final report. It sounded as a quite simple process to collect that kind of background package and the idea was to make analysis based on that information. It wasn’t so difficult to collect information, but we made one mistake which caused me personal crisis. We were curious to hear two different stories about the same situation. Both of those stories were believable ones and they were based on facts. How it could be possible that two bodies were using different facts when they were talking about the same situation?
The outcome of our work would be quite different if we would believe on the other story but not on the other one. That’s why we decided to have the third opinion from the independent research company. We got there the third version of “the truth”. Which one of those three stories is the right one? We don’t know but it was easy to choose the facts from the research company because they probably don’t have reason to have wrong data by purpose. But those two other bodies are working in that area and they should have more information than the foreign research company has, so did we make right decision?
Of course I have known that companies are using data which is supporting their own business goals. Here in Finland we are even used to say “lie, whopper, statistics” which describes that it’s possible to “prove” with statistics whatever you want. My problem is that I don’t understand why we are doing that? I believe that the world would be better place and companies would make better business if we would have the real data available. Sharing the information would help everybody and then it would be up to companies and persons how they would use that information.
I describe two cases from the gambling world where the correct information would help almost everybody. The first case is the prevention of gambling problems. The gambling industry has all data of their customers’ gambling behavior. If ministries or other authorities who are taking care of gambling problems would have that data and if they could link that to other information they have about same persons, they would have much better tools for fighting against gambling problems.
Someone might say that gambling companies are not willing to share all information about their customers because they are afraid of loosing too much revenue by doing that. They have risk of loosing customers who are playing much, probably too much. From short term business point of view they are the most profitable customers, but is that the case in long-term? If gambling business would manage to reduce gambling problems, the reputation of whole industry would increase and in long-term it might mean better business for all gambling companies. If regulators would have better information and tools, they could set more personalized limits and let normal customers continue gambling without so tight restrictions.
The other case is the discussion of market shares and the size of gambling business in specific countries. I take Finland as an example although I believe that it is not the worst example at all. Does anyone know what is the size of whole gambling business in Finland and how big market shares different gambling companies have here? No, although all data is there but companies are not willing to share it. Just the total numbers from monopoly operator Veikkaus are available and everything else is based on estimations or even guesses.
Veikkaus used to publish their own analysis about the size of total gambling business and their own market share of that in Finland. Offshore companies were saying that Veikkaus was underestimating the offshore gambling business in Finland. At the same time gambling problem researches were saying that Veikkaus was overestimating that offshore gambling. That led to the situation where Veikkaus is nowadays using the independent estimation from H2GC, but the similar discussion is still going on around that issue. Offshore companies say that offshore business is bigger than H2GC is estimating and authorities say vice versa. It is easy to understand what the reasons for that are. Both bodies are trying to improve their own interests.
It would be important to have the real data from the offshore companies to make correct decisions about the gambling law and regulation. Now the authorities have to make decisions based on incomplete information and there is the risk that they will make wrong decisions. I would like to develop the system where we would have all important facts available for decision making. That would make gambling business better for the customers for sure and probably it would be better for the companies too.
Gambling Guru 