EPIC Risk Management 12

EPIC Risk Management was founded by its CEO, Paul Buck, in 2013. Paul had suffered a decade-long gambling addiction which resulted in losses of over £1 million and resulted in devastating consequences. Sadly, he knew there would be others like him in the world, and that mission became the bedrock of EPIC.

EPIC is commercially sustainable but socially driven, with the aim of helping organisations, and its people avoid the destructive effects of gambling related harm. It is a professional services organisation who specialise in awareness raising, education, independently accredited training and board level down consultancy. Over the years an expert team has been formed, many of whom have lived the experience of gambling harm, to educate, advise and consult those who are statistically and evidentially in the highest risk sectors for gambling harm.

Elite athletes are statistically more likely to develop a gambling problem than the average member of society. As a result, EPIC’s awareness programmes in this sector are some of the largest ever done in the world of sport, working extensively within professional sports, but more recently manoeuvering to work at grass roots level. EPIC currently delivers gambling harm awareness to the English Football League, the Professional Cricketers and Rugby Players Association, several Premier League Clubs and most recently Racing Welfare, involving delivery of 300 sessions to stakeholders across the racing community.

Rapid growth in the US also began at the beginning of the pandemic, during which EPIC doubled in size and broke into America as a new market at a crucial time when the States were changing their rules and regulations around sports betting. In late 2021, they began rolling out a 5-year programme to deliver to professional athletes from the National Collegiate Athletic Association, delivering to potentially 500,000 college athletes in 1,110 colleges in every State. Following on, EPIC has also signed to deliver to the Major League

Soccer and National Football League Players Associations, and in February delivered their first White Paper alongside their Pro-Sports Advisory Board ‘Gambling Harm Prevention in Sport’ Summit at Wembley Stadium.

EPIC has always worked within education, noting the vulnerability of under 18s to gambling, as well the dangers of in-game spending and their close ties with gambling. In 2022 they delivered sessions to around 30,000 school children in the UK, alongside all of the under 18s who attend their sessions as part of professional sports academies. EPIC has also delivered harm awareness to various military units, numerous sites within the construction industry, the financial services industry and the criminal justice system.

EPIC is not an anti-gambling organisation, but understand from lived experience how the enjoyment from gambling could spiral into something extremely destructive. As a result, lived experienced staff work as consultants for leading gambling operators, advising on mechanisms and strategies to protect players from gambling harm. EPIC has a suite of independently accredited training solutions to deliver to customer facing staff around the world on how to best support their customers and to appropriately handle those who may be demonstrating signs of risk to themselves. By working directly with board rooms in this sector, it is the opportunity to influence future safer gambling direction.

What EPIC delivers is bespoke to the target audience, largely through face-to-face powerful sessions but with an increasing leverage of digital technology. All work is evidence based and grounded in the latest academic research, ensuring compliance with any new advances in gambling protection measures from all over the world, alongside rapidly changing laws.

Having worked in 28 countries now, it’s a long way in 10 years from a man just wanting to share his story with others.