The annual GBG High Street Hub will take place at the ARE Expo in April with a strong showing from local authority and police forces expected. Working with the IoL, the Gambling Business Group will be using the Hub as an opportunity to highlight the significance advance in player protection technology and also raise the issues facing high street businesses today.
It is expected to be the largest delegation of local authority licensing officials and police force representatives at an industry exhibition when the Gambling Business Group stages its High Street Hub at ARE 2026 on 28-29 April in Manchester.
Last year almost 50 northern based officials attended the GBG’s Hub for a series of presentations, Q&A sessions and a tour of the show floor to view the new player protection innovations currently being rolled out at high street AGCs, bingo clubs, betting shops and pubs.
And this year, preparations are ongoing with the Institute of Licensing for special delegate tours of industry manufacturers during its own annual gambling conference for licensing officers which has been arranged to coincide with the Hub at the Cotton Sheds in Victoria Warehouse.
Charlotte Meller, GBG’s General Manager, is the organisational brain behind the High Street Hub, and she has been working on developing this annual GBG/licensing authority assembly.
“This is now our third year of bringing licensing authorities into the High Street Hub and enabling officials to engage first hand with industry innovators on player protections and new developments,” she explained.
“There will be demonstrations of age verification systems, player protections, self exclusion innovations on display at our members’ stands and it will serve as an ideal one-stop centre for local and police officials to see and test how far measures to protect vulnerable players have progressed.”
Part of the evolving relationship between the GBG and IoL, this year’s Hub tours come at an opportune time as the debate on high street gaming and gambling, and notably the Aim to Permit rule, becomes more vocal amongst politicians and councillors.
In an interview with the IoL’s magazine coming up in Spring, GBG chief Peter Hannibal noted: “The Hub provides an important opportunity for machine manufacturers and our systems innovators to show the technological developments and reintroduce a balanced context to what is a very febrile debate. The power of age verification and data systems for player protections has become so far advanced that it has responded to and moved beyond many of the arguments offered against licence applications. And the High Street Hub enables officials to explore the pioneering player protection technologies available and also to discuss and challenge the gambling industry on the measures required to ensure these innovations support their own licensing criteria.”
Originally published on Coinslot on January 19, 2026. Republished with permission.