Single Player ViewYour Guide to Protecting Players & Profits

In the UK alone, 44% of adults enjoy some form of wagered gaming, from betting and playing a lottery to online bingo. This takes place across a range of channels, with online gameplay making gambling even easier and more accessible to players.

The gaming industry is a major contributor to the UK economy, supporting over 100,000 jobs and generating more than £3 billion in tax revenue annually. In this highly competitive sector, delivering fast and efficient customer onboarding is essential. After all, a time-consuming and onerous registration process risks losing potential players and forfeiting business growth. At the same time, they are navigating an increasingly complex – and stricter – regulatory landscape, designed to prevent crime, ensure fair play, and safeguard vulnerable customers.

A Single Player View (SPV) offers a strategic solution to all of these challenges by consolidating data from multiple sources into one comprehensive profile of each player. This unified approach allows gaming operators to identify problem gamblers early, prevent duplicate accounts, and enhance customer interactions through personalised experiences. It’s also somewhat of a secret weapon when it comes to regulatory compliance, social responsibility, and improved operational efficiency, thanks to a wealth of player information in one, easy-to-access location.

In this guide, we’ll explore the key principles of a SPV, benefits for both players and gaming operators, and the things to consider when creating one.

A SPV provides a consolidated view of all the data you hold about a player, to better understand their:

• financial vulnerability
• past gaming behaviour
• past gaming purchases
• communication preferences
• debt history (or lack of)
• relationship to your brand
• propensity to game.

SPV is the gaming sector’s version of the Single Customer View (SCV), which is an aggregated and holistic representation of all the data known by an organisation about its customers. A SCV is used for the financial services, telecommunications, retail, utilities, and banking sectors.

Understanding whether you already have a relationship with a player – even if that’s across multiple brands – can help fuel real-time decisions about credit and help you provide higher levels of player care. It also gives you the opportunity to identify problem gamblers early on and avoid duplicate players or multiple sign-ups, which in turn can better help you comply with industry regulations.

What are the benefits for players and gaming operators?

Better navigate gaming laws and regulations

The UK government has introduced a number of regulations to prevent the gaming industry being abused by fraudsters, as well to ensure a safe and fair environment for all players. These include:

• The Proceeds of Crime Act 2002
• The Terrorism Act 2000
• The Gambling Act 2005
• The Gambling Commission’s money laundering and terrorist financing risk assessment

An SPV will help you adhere to these regulations by allowing you to assess all your player data in a clear and coherent way. It will also help confirm your information is up to date and identify any red flags that could indicate financial crime or gaming abuse.

Identify and prevent bonus abuse

Bonus abuse is when a player exploits gaming bonuses and promotions offered by online gambling operators, and it’s on the rise. The process typically involves a player signing up multiple times under false email addresses to claim new player bonuses, like extra money or free plays, and it costs the industry heavily.

Most offenders are regular online gamblers who simply see it as a way to play more. However, if that player has gambling issues, then the ability for cheaper play could push them further into financial vulnerability. As well as this, organised fraudsters often exploit these offers for financial crime gains.

Reduce your risk of fraud

Alongside the bonus abuse concerns detailed above, fraud more generally is a consistent threat to the gaming industry and can harm operators and players, leaving both financially vulnerable. Preventing fraud through gaming compliance measures not only safeguards players and enhances the gaming experience but also protects revenue and reduces the risk of money laundering. To help avoid this, robust checks are essential to verify customer identities. This includes confirming that a player’s bank account is genuine and belongs to them.

In addition to this, having clear, individualised data on hand can help you respond quickly to regulators’ inquiries. This can be crucial in avoiding unnecessary fines as in 2022 alone, regulatory failures led to over £76 million in fines being handed out from the UK Gambling Commission.

Provide increased support for vulnerable players

Accurate, up-to-date customer information and a unified view of each player are essential for effectively managing self-exclusions and internal exclusion lists. This comprehensive data will allow you to quickly identify at-risk individuals and provide appropriate support as their circumstances change.

The UK Gambling Commission started to enforce mandatory financial vulnerability checks for all remote play operators in August 2024, to ensure gaming doesn’t exceed a players’ means. The rules state that if players deposit over £500 in 30 days, checks for financial stress signs will be required. Since February 2025, the limit has dropped to £150. Creating an SPV will greatly help you accurately undertake and manage these financial vulnerability checks.

Create a more personalised experience

Gaining a deeper understanding of your players will help drive customer loyalty and retention. This is because you can use tailored communications, based on player preferences, to enhance and personalise the games, offers, and support services you provide.

How to create a Single Player View

A Single Player View (SPV) is more than just a data dump; it’s a strategic tool that helps you understand your players better. By integrating all player information into one profile, you can enhance their gaming experience and provide effective support when needed.

The first step in creating your SPV is to assess the problems faced by your consumers and what your organisation needs to do in order to ensure player protection. For example, could you be helping to create a safer gambling environment in a more effective way? By conducting an honest appraisal of where your data is currently at, you can best understand how to improve it and what areas of information are missing.

The scale and scope of this challenge will vary from operator to operator, which in turn will come with its own implementation costs. However, the end result will provide you with compliant and accurate data that allows players to be audited and protected.

1. Prepare your business for change

A SPV provides benefits for every department in your business; from ensuring the marketing department can deliver appropriate promotions, to satisfying the legal team that all regulations have been adhered to.

This makes effort and buy-in is crucial from all teams, so be sure to communicate what you are trying to achieve with a SPV and how you may require each departments’ help.

2. Define your objectives

To better determine your objectives, start with where you are now and conduct an honest appraisal of your current data quality and its capabilities. Take a look at our key questions to ask ahead of implementing a SPV. This can help you get clear on the information you already have, and what you need to prioritise:

• Can you currently connect your player data across all platforms and channels?
• Can you recognise existing players when they open a new account on a different platform?
• Are your identity and financial checks truly individualised?
• Are you able to spot bonus abuse when a single player begins creating multiple accounts?

3. Identify your data sources

Fragmented data can lead to missing information and mean your SPV paints an inaccurate picture. To avoid this, you’ll want to identify all of your data sources. You can do this by asking each department to locate all of the sources they use to manage information. This can include records on player history, CRMs, or email databases.

4. Collect and cleanse data

Arguably the most important step in creating a SPV is to collect and cleanse your data, also known as the identity resolution process. An identity resolution will help you clean up any incorrect, outdated, or duplicated information so you can be sure you’re working with high-quality data.

5. Unify player profiles

Unifying your player profiles means all of your high-quality data will now be in one place, giving you a comprehensive and accurate overview of your customers.

6. Enrich data with additional insights

Although not essential, enriching your data with additional sources or third-party information, can help create a more comprehensive view of your players.

7. Invest in analytics to gain insight

For your business to truly experience the benefits of a SPV, you need to understand what that data is telling you. Investing in analytics can help you translate the information into things like gaming promotions or new business offerings.

8. Action your insights

Be sure to revisit your objectives to see how your data and analysis is helping you achieve them. Having measurable KPIs will ensure the effort you’re investing into a SPV is worth it.

9. Continually maintain and update your SPV

Remember, a truly useful SPV is never complete. Your organisation should have processes and quality control checks in place to continually update, manage, and maintain the accuracy of data.

In conclusion

A SPV isn’t simply a data consolidation tool. It’s a strategic asset that allows you to confidently and consistently adhere to changing regulatory requirements, manage spending limits, identify and support vulnerable players, and provide a high-level of customer service.