GVC Holdings welcomes the launch of the Young Gamers and Gamblers Education Trust’s (YGAM) Parent Hub, a new portal providing information, activities and support to help parents and carers understand the potential risks associated with gambling and gaming including products such as loot boxes, the digital items that are bought with real world money and contain random items of unknown value.

The hub, developed with the help of funding from GVC, has been launched to coincide with schools breaking up for summer.

YGAM is a national charity with a social purpose to inform, educate and safeguard young and vulnerable people, helping them build resilience and understand the potential harms caused by gambling and gaming.

The hub has been informed by research conducted in partnership with leading academics from Newcastle and Loughborough Universities to help parents and carers understand why, and control how, their children purchase items like loot boxes. The research was pivotal in formulating YGAM’s recommended measures and will form part of a larger Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)-funded project investigating the blurring between gaming and gambling in digital games.

The new website has received endorsements from parents, teachers, safeguarding officers and the Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH) who called the resources ‘vitally important’ for parents.

Grainne Hurst, GVC’s Group Director of Corporate Affairs, commented: “YGAM is an incredible organisation and its simple, usable resources help parents have honest and open conversations with their children about gaming and gambling. We are delighted to have been able to support its vitally important educative resource hub, which launches at a crucial time, during the summer holidays. GVC’s Changing for the Bettor strategy seeks to advance society’s collective understanding of the risks of problematic gaming and gambling, and we look forward to continuing our support of YGAM’s evidence-led efforts in this area.”

Lee Willows, YGAM’s Founder & Chief Executive, commented: “GVC are longstanding supporters of YGAM and we are grateful for their support of Parent Hub alongside operators Lottoland and Playtech as a cross-industry initiative. Our vision was to have an up to date, central expert resource library for parents and carers and extend our successful face-to-face directly to parents, with a fully integrated digital offer, which is phase two of this important initiative.”