Maximum £5 stake on digital slot machines comes into force

The amount of money a gambler can stake on the spin of a digital slot machine has been capped at £5, as a major plank of reforms unveiled by the previous government took effect.

The move, which is expected to crimp online casino revenues, came into force on Sunday 1 September – two days after gambling firms began implementing separate “affordability checks” triggered by customer losses.

Both measures were announced last year as part of a white paper that rolled back parts of the UK’s broadly permissive regime on betting and gaming, which was designed by Tony Blair’s Labour government in 2005.

The gambling industry has since suffered a backlash against practices perceived as exploitative, amid an explosion in online gambling via smartphones, which had not been invented when the laws were drawn up.

Before this weekend, digital slot machine stakes were effectively unlimited – in stark contrast to the £2 limit imposed in 2019 on shop-based “fixed odds betting terminals”, which offer digital roulette.

From Sunday, the maximum stake is £5, falling to £2 for under-25s – a measure the previous government said was designed to “counter increased risk of significant harm and life-changing losses”. The Guardian revealed the new stake limits in February.

While some operators have already reduced their maximum limits, at least one – 888 and William Hill owner Evoke – was offering higher stake limits last month.

The industry made £3.2bn from online slots in the last year for which statistics are available, representing the lion’s share of £4bn in online casino revenue.

Digital slots are controversial because they are associated with higher rates of problem gambling than other products such as sports betting, according to previous surveys for the NHS.

Alongside the measure, gambling firms began implementing new “light touch” affordability checks from Friday, as part of a scheme launched by the Gambling Commission.

The system requires companies to perform enhanced checks on whether customers can afford to keep playing if their net losses rise above £500 in a month. Operators will screen customers using publicly available data such as county court judgments and bankruptcies.

The threshold will fall to £150 of online betting losses a month from 28 February next year, the Gambling Commission said.

Alongside the new limits, the regulator will begin testing a much tougher series of checks, triggered by losses of greater than £1,000 within a rolling 24-hour period, or of £2,000 within 90 days.

The pilot scheme for enhanced checks is expected to last six months, after which the thresholds could be changed or abandoned.

The Guardian has approached the industry lobby group, the Betting & Gaming Council, for comment.