Guest article provided by IAGR partner, Greo Evidence Insights. 

Gambling markets often evolve faster than the systems designed to monitor them. With gambling expanding rapidly, regulators and operators face a critical challenge: how to know what’s working, for whom, and under what conditions. The evidence about gambling harm and the effectiveness of harm reduction initiatives often exists in silos, so the challenge isn’t always a lack of data, but a lack of connected insight. Regulators are often faced with making decisions based on partial or lagging data, while operators, public health agencies, researchers, and communities each hold information on different pieces of the puzzle. This fragmentation makes it difficult to see the real-world effects of harm reduction initiatives or to act in a timely and proportionate way when harms emerge.

At the recent IAGR 2025 Toronto conference, Greo’s session ‘What works and why: assessing safer gambling outcomes to advance evidence-based decision-making’ (pictured above) introduced the concept of sightlines – the channels that connect evidence, feedback, and learning between regulators, operators, support systems, and the public. When regulators engage with these sightlines, they can gain a more complete field of view of what works, for whom, and under what conditions—supporting more timely, evidence-based decisions.

From reporting to learning

Elizabeth Lusk from Greo at IAGR2025

Traditional assessment of safer gambling has tended to focus on reporting activity: how many campaigns were launched, how many tools were offered, how many people participated. But resilient regulation depends on knowing impact: what changed, for whom, and under what conditions. That’s where outcomes-based evaluation becomes essential, which is informed by multiple sightlines concurrently and across the entire gambling ecosystem.

Sightlines represent both channels of evidence and feedback loops for learning. They create connections across the gambling ecosystem, enabling regulators to see the full picture of harm and impact by integrating multiple vantage points, from regulation to operations to support systems to public accountability. By making these connections visible, sightlines provide the data needed for evaluation.

Evaluation, in turn, defines what success looks like and identifies the indicators that signal progress. When combined with continuous performance monitoring, this creates an ongoing feedback system. Together, sightlines and evaluation form a cycle of evidence-driven learning, where data from sightlines feeds evaluation, measurement guides monitoring, and monitoring shapes policy, ensuring that learning is continuous and the system drives meaningful impact.

Connecting the gambling ecosystem through sightlines

Megan Harris from Greo at IAGR2025

During our presentation, we outlined four key sightlines that together can support the creation of a coherent, learning-oriented regulatory environment:

1. Regulator <= => Operator: Resulting in regulation informed by demonstrated outcomes from operators, creating shared accountability and visible progress.
2. Regulator <= => People Who Gamble: Providing operational data informed by player, community, and lived-experience insights show what works at venue, product, and player levels, driving continuous quality improvement.
3. Regulator <= => System: Enabling multi-sector collaboration where policy, public health initiatives, and treatment services are informed by shared prevention and education outcomes and monitoring frameworks, ensuring evidence travels across sectors.
4. Regulator <= => Public (including people who do not gamble): Including independent evaluation and population-level monitoring that sustains public trust by showing that improvements in player wellbeing and harm reduction are real and measurable.

Each sightline provides a distinct but interconnected view of the system. Together, they allow regulators to see the whole picture and to trace how regulations and their related interventions influence behaviour, wellbeing, and trust over time.

From evidence to impact

Building these sightlines requires investment in evaluation capacity, data sharing, and governance structures that promote transparency. Examples such as the Cyprus National Betting Authority’s Safer Gambling Strategy, South Australia’s Gambling Harm Support Monitoring Framework, and the Massachusetts Gaming Commission’s Player Health Framework show how this approach comes alive in practice.

When sightlines are strong, evidence is consolidated, learning is shared, and progress becomes visible. But when they’re missing, data remains siloed and regulation risks falling behind the markets it aims to govern. Establishing clear sightlines across the gambling ecosystem isn’t just about improving the availability and use of data — it’s about fostering trust, accountability, and resilience in how we prevent and respond to harm. Because seeing what works is the first step towards making it work better.

The session at IAGR2025 in Toronto in October 2025 was presented by:

• Elizabeth Lusk, Chief Strategy Officer, Greo Evidence Insights, Canada
• Dr Sasha Stark, Director, Evaluation and Implementation Research, Greo Evidence Insights, Canada
• Lindsay Kalbfleisch, Director of Knowledge Mobilization, Greo Evidence Insights, Canada
• Megan Harris, Chief Experience Officer, Greo Evidence Insights, Canada