Reflecting on Problem Gambling Awareness Month 2025
As Problem Gambling Awareness Month 2025 comes to an end, we’re reflecting on how this year’s campaign has helped to raise public awareness of the issue of gambling-related harm.
Following the theme of ‘Seeking Understanding’, this has been an appropriate context for everyone at EPIC Global Solutions, as we share our personal experiences and expertise to educate and empower on a daily basis, helping to navigate the impacts of gambling safely and sustainably.
EPIC’s staff harness personal experience of gambling harm. We are trusted experts and our longevity in this area makes us a global leader, which is why this annual campaign is a big deal for us every March, providing an elevated platform for our voice to be amplified and help provide the understanding that audiences need regarding this often misunderstood issue.
We’ve been reviewing the month with the help of four members of staff whose voices have been part of our public discussion on PGAM this year:
- Teresa Fiore, SVP North America
- Dr Meg Popovic, Head of Delivery North America
- Liz Thielen, Consultant
- Jake Sanford, Associate
We asked all four for their take on how this year’s campaign had been received…
What have we done for PGAM this month that you’ve been particularly proud of?
Teresa: “We’ve delivered a number of special events and projects for PGAM, but the two with the highest public profile have been in collaboration with Bally’s and ROGA. With Bally’s, we’ve delivered a series of challenges in Rhode Island to raise awareness of problem gambling issues and create a blueprint that we can roll out to other states in future years. Our webinar last week with ROGA was also attended by some significant influencers to understand the impact that our new platform, Know Your Play, can have among college students to make them more informed around gaming, wellbeing and money management. It’s pleasing to see that we’ve had interest from new organizations wanting to prevent gambling-related harm within their teams as a result of these initiatives. I believe this month has once again shown that EPIC remain the go-to organization in the US if you want to work with experts who truly understand problem gambling and our speakers have shared lived experience that you just have to stop and listen to, in order to realize what this is all about.”
Meg: “I was lucky enough to get the chance to speak at the Leaders Challenge that we helped Bally’s to host as part of their PGAM campaign in Rhode Island and I was very pleased to see the positive response from key people in that state who can play in impactful role in preventing gambling-related harm. I commend Teresa Fiore, the team at Bally’s and all the partners who helped to make that event so successful at the start of the awareness month. I also think the launch of Know Your Play is a highly important development during this period and the calibre of influencers that logged on to our webinar as we explained the concept last week was a very positive note.”
Liz: “I love how EPIC helps to foster understanding by providing supportive spaces for us to share our lived experiences. The emphasis not just on what went wrong, but also on opportunities for others to be better informed and intentional when making decisions about betting, is so impactful.”
Jake: “This is the first time I’ve been involved with EPIC during PGAM and it was great to be able to share part of my story to try and help others. I couldn’t believe that my video last week picked up over 4,000 views in less than three days on Instagram, which shows that there’s definitely an interest from the public in finding out how to address gambling harm. Our team has been very up front and honest in the stories they’ve shared to try and make an impact during PGAM and help others to understand problem gambling. We’re lucky to have some real specialists at EPIC who know how to front up to this issue and find solutions.”
What have you seen our clients/partners doing for PGAM that shows their commitment to RG?
Teresa: “Pretty much every client we work with in the US has shown their commitment to RG during Problem Gambling Awareness Month. Just like previous years, we’ve worked with most of our client base in the gambling industry to deliver specific training or events during PGAM, but the important thing is that this isn’t a once a year effort from any of them – they’re just taking the chance to reinforce the message while there’s an extra focus on it.”
Meg: “It was pleasing that the MLS Players Association asked Marc Williams [senior consultant] to share his story and red flags pertaining to problem gambling. They distributed this internally to their players with hopes of raising awareness and also decreasing the stigma associated with gambling.”
What would you potentially like next year’s campaign to focus on?
Teresa: “We hope that we’ve helped to create a blueprint for next year’s PGAM and beyond with the challenges we’ve created with Bally’s this year. We’ll be reviewing the successes of this year’s events in Rhode Island and be refining it to produce a template that we hope can be rolled out across multiple states to help the harm prevention message to resonate with the public. Using trusted local voices in this campaign has been impactful and we hope to work with other similar influencers in other states next year to make sure the key messages land with the audience.”
Liz: “Next year I would like to see some sort of talking points to offer people on how to have conversations about safer gambling practices.”
Jake: “I think for next year’s focus we could look towards integrating our gambling spectrum a little more, which is something we discuss in presentations to help the audience see where their relationship with gambling sits, from least to most concern. If people see that and the examples of each, I think it would have them see where they sit on the spectrum and can have them realize what steps of the journey they are on… whether they are on track or heading down to disordered gambling.”
Listen to the experts as EPIC discussing the PGAM theme of ‘Seeking Understanding’ via this year’s YouTube playlist of informative videos that we shared to raise awareness throughout March – click here to hear their thoughts.
