How self-exclusion actually works

Self-exclusion is a request that a gambling business refuse to serve you for a fixed period. It works, but only inside the boundary of the scheme you used, and the schemes differ enormously in what they cover.

Three sizes of block

• One operator. You ask a single company to close or freeze your account. Quick, and limited to that company and the brands it runs.
• A national online scheme. One registration covers every site licensed in that country. In Great Britain that is GAMSTOP, and registration with it applies to all operators licensed there; several other countries run an equivalent register.
• Venue schemes. Betting shops, casinos and arcades operate their own, usually covering a geographic area, and they require a visit and a photograph so that staff can recognise you.

The gaps between them are where people relapse. An online register does not cover a shop on the high street, a venue scheme does not cover websites, and none of them covers a site licensed somewhere else that accepts your money anyway.

How long it lasts

Periods are fixed in advance and cannot normally be shortened. Great Britain's online register starts at six months, with five years available; venue schemes commonly run from six months to a few years. That irreversibility is the point: the decision is made once, while you want it, and cannot be undone on the evening you would rather it were.

At the end, most schemes do not simply switch access back on. A cooling-off period follows the expiry, and reinstatement usually requires a deliberate request rather than a login.

What it does and does not stop

A business that has accepted a self-exclusion must block the account, refuse new ones, and remove you from its marketing lists — the promotional mail is as much a part of the block as the account itself. Where an operator lets an excluded customer through, regulators treat it as a licensing failure, and refunds have been ordered.

What it cannot do is cover what it does not reach. Two additional layers are worth adding alongside it: the gambling block that most banks and several card issuers now offer, which refuses payments to gambling merchants, and blocking software on the phone and computer. Together with the register, those close most of the routes that a single-operator exclusion leaves open.

Self-exclusion is a control, not treatment. National help lines and free counselling services exist in most jurisdictions, and the schemes themselves usually list them at the point of registration.