Gauselmann Group owned Praesepe, which operates a total of 165 adult gaming centres, five family entertainment centres, and five bingo clubs in the UK, has pledged a total of £84,000 to GambleAware covering the first quarter of the gambling industry charity’s fiscal year ending 1 June.
The sum represents 10.2 percent of the £820,000 either received by or pledged to the charity over the period, courtesy of 144 donations of £50 or more with the majority of large sums coming from online gambling brands and derived from their much higher Gross Gaming Yield (GGY).
GambleAware, which requests enterprises that profit from gambling to donate a minimum 0.1percent of their GGY, received £10.1 million from the industry during the financial year ending 31 March 2020.
Commenting on the pledge, Praesepe chief operating officer, Mark Schertle, said: “Compliance and social responsibility are at the heart of everything that we do. There are a certain number of important social responsibility commitments that we undertake ourselves, including the on-going investment in our dedicated training facilities, the intensive SR training of our consumer facing staff, the deployment of the consumer-facing Playright app throughout all of our venues, the support of Responsible Gambling Week and the promotion of safer gambling messaging, utilising 4,000 of our estate of digital B3 and Category C machines.
“However, there are also areas that require highly specialist insight and experience which is why it is so important to contribute to research, education and treatment in order to help reduce further the 0.5 percent of adults who experience problems relating to gambling.”
Image: Mark Schertle Praesepe chief operating officer