UK Coroner Demands National Lottery Coverage Under GAMSTOP After Father's Suicide
A coroner urged adding the UK National Lottery to GAMSTOP after Stephen Goff, 54, died by suicide on August 18, 2025, following heavy lottery spending post-exclusion from other gambling. The UKGC is talking with Allwyn and GAMSTOP and will consider scope expansion despite lower-risk classification. The case flags incomplete coverage in self-exclusion tools.
SCCG Take — Regulators face pressure to unify self-exclusion across all products. Operators should anticipate tighter lottery controls to limit regulatory and reputational exposure from similar incidents.
A UK coroner has called for the National Lottery to be added to the GAMSTOP self-exclusion program after a father took his own life after gambling excessively on the lottery.
Stephen Goff, 54, died in his flat in Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire, on August 18, 2025. The inquest heard that he exhausted his bank account on lottery tickets following his exclusion from gambling.
Coroner's Prevention of Future Deaths Report
Senior coroner Emma Whitting for Bedfordshire and Luton dispatched a Prevention of Future Deaths report to the UK Gambling Commission and GAMSTOP. Whitting noted that National Lottery draws fall outside the national self-exclusion scheme that blocks access to licensed gambling services.
Freya Geoff, Goff's daughter, described the exclusion of the National Lottery from GAMSTOP as a glaring omission and called for it to be added to the blocked list. As reported by GamblingNews, the UKGC has confirmed it is already in talks with Allwyn, the National Lottery operator, and GAMSTOP on potential consumer protections.
Limits of Segmented Self-Exclusion
The UKGC stated that National Lottery draw-based games are generally lower risk when compared against other gambling products. Even so, the Commission will consider further changes, including extending the scope of GAMSTOP in some form. This case exposes a specific vulnerability: excluded gamblers can still access one major vertical that escapes the unified safeguards applied elsewhere. Regulators must now weigh targeted integration against the product's risk profile to close the loophole without over-regulating lower-harm formats.
Gaming, betting and prediction markets — the desk’s read, every weekday.
Subscribe →