Bwin Hands Over User Data for Addiction Research

10 February 2009

Bwin Interactive Entertainment A.G. is passing along its anonymous activity data from more than 40,000 users as the founding sponsor of the Transparency Project, a public data repository for privately funded datasets related to addictive behavior, the company announced on Tuesday.

The project, an initiative of the division on addictions Cambridge Health Alliance, was created to promote transparency for privately-funded science and offer better access to scientific information, the online gaming provider said in a prepared statement.

“Greater access to scientific information, in this case actual internet gaming activity records, should accelerate our ability to understand problem gaming, and also to implement the mechanisms necessary to detect it early,” said Manfred Bodner, co-chief executive of Bwin. “Our ultimate goal, of course, is to prevent it from occurring in the first place.”