Widow Campaigns for Gambling Regulation After Husband's Suicide

Annie Ashton discovered that her husband had placed over 100 bets a day in the period leading up to his death. " Her husband, Luke Ashton, was found dead on April 22, 2021, in South Yorkshire, England. He was 40 years old. Three weeks after his death, police returned his phone to Ashton.

She then accessed bank details that led to a PayPal account and transactions to a gambling operator's platform. She asked a coroner to investigate the death. The coroner, Ivan Cartwright, found that Luke Ashton suffered from a longstanding gambling disorder which contributed to his decision to take his own life.

The coroner also determined that the gambling operator did not interact with him in any meaningful way in the two years before his death. "Opportunities were missed, which may possibly have changed the outcome for Luke," the coroner said. >The coroner found that the gambling operator he used did not interact with him in any meaningful way in the two years preceding his death.

— Coroner Ivan Cartwright The operator, Betfair, used an algorithm meant to identify customers at risk of harm. The managing director of Betfair's parent company, Flutter, told the inquest that the company should have done more. The coroner described the ruling as the first time in England that gambling disorder had been listed as a cause of death.

Flutter said in a letter to the coroner that it had made a number of changes to its systems and controls since early 2021. The majority of those changes occurred prior to the company becoming aware that Luke Ashton had taken his own life. The company added that it would incorporate additional learnings from the case, including reviewing patterns of play to amend its safer gambling models.

Since her husband's death, Ashton has campaigned for stronger regulation of the gambling industry and greater awareness of gambling harm. She recently visited Melbourne, Australia, to work with gambling researchers. Ashton has described gambling disorder as a hidden addiction within the professional world.

She met her husband in high school. In 2018 she learned he had lost money gambling after opening a letter about a bank loan. The couple paid off the debts, after which he self-excluded from the operator and told her he was finished with gambling. The coroner later found the gambling disorder was longstanding, at least from 2019.

Luke Ashton had been assessed as a low-risk gambler by the operator, with his gambling most intensive in the 10 weeks prior to his death. Ashton said the inquest revealed data from his phone, the operator and medical experts that showed the extent of the problem.

In the two years since the inquest, Ashton has been involved in a civil case related to the death. She has led a petition to stop gambling operators from offering free bet incentives and has sought a judicial review of the UK's gambling regulator. She said people have approached her to share their own experiences with gambling harm, and that health professionals in the UK have improved how they discuss gambling disorders.

In the past week in Australia, a coroner in Melbourne began investigating the death of 22-year-old Kyle Hudson, who lost tens of thousands of dollars on sports betting before taking his own life. The federal government released its response to a report into gambling harm, announcing partial restrictions on gambling advertising rather than a full ban.

Angela Rintoul, a principal research fellow in gambling and suicide at the University of Melbourne, released research in 2023 that found at least 4 per cent of suicides in Victoria between 2009 and 2016 were related to gambling harm. She said the work was labour-intensive because not enough data is collected on the issue.

Rintoul called for better systems to track gambling impacts from multiple sources including coroners' courts, emergency departments and helplines.