Gambling addiction help in Hong Kong

Verified helplines

Helplines and online chat

One central number covers the city: 1834 633, the gambling counselling hotline funded by the Ping Wo Fund. Calls are answered by the four centres the Fund pays for, and the centres also reply through instant-messaging apps and social media.

The Fund's own site, donotgamble.org.hk, lists the centres and their contact routes. Numbers for other countries are in the helplines directory.

Self-exclusion

Hong Kong has no statutory self-exclusion register — nothing equivalent to GAMSTOP or BetStop, and no government list that operators must check. Because legal gambling runs through a single operator, self-exclusion here means excluding yourself from that operator.

The Hong Kong Jockey Club runs a Voluntary Account Betting Self-exclusion Service. You apply in person, at a racecourse or an off-course betting branch, and choose a period of two years, three years or an indefinite one. During the exclusion, your existing betting account is suspended and you cannot open a new account with the Club.

How other jurisdictions structure this is set out in self-exclusion by country.

Blocking gambling payments and sites

Hong Kong banks do not publish a gambling-transaction block on their cards, so there is no setting to switch on in a banking app the way there is in Australia or the UK. That makes device blocking and a second person holding the money the realistic controls here.

Blocking software that covers phones and computers is compared in blocking apps for iOS and Android. If debt is already part of the picture, the general steps are in what to do about gambling debt.

Free treatment and counselling

Treatment is delivered through four counselling and treatment centres, run by Caritas, the Tung Wah Group of Hospitals, Zion Social Service and Hong Kong Lutheran Social Service, and financed by the Ping Wo Fund. The Government set the Fund up in September 2003 to pay for research into gambling problems, public education, and counselling, treatment and other support for gamblers. The Hong Kong Jockey Club has undertaken to donate HK$45 million a year to the Fund for the four-year period starting in 2023/24.

The centres provide specialised counselling and treatment for people with a gambling disorder and for their family members. The route in is the hotline on 1834 633 or a WhatsApp message to the centre nearest you. If you want to check where your own gambling sits first, the self-test takes a few minutes.

Support for family and friends

Family members are served directly by the same four centres, not only as a channel to the person gambling — the Ping Wo Fund's remit explicitly covers counselling and treatment for gamblers and their families. You can call 1834 633 on your own behalf.

Nobody else can put a person into the Jockey Club's self-exclusion scheme; the application has to be made in person by the account holder. What a family member can do is get counselling, take control of shared money, and prepare for the conversation — see how to help someone with a gambling problem and the signs of gambling addiction.

Gambling law and the regulator

Gambling policy sits with the Home and Youth Affairs Bureau. Under the Gambling Ordinance (Cap. 148), all gambling activities are illegal except those expressly authorised by the Government under the Betting Duty Ordinance (Cap. 108), those licensed by the public officer appointed by the Secretary for Home and Youth Affairs, and social gambling exemptions.

In practice the authorised outlets are horse racing, football betting and the Mark Six lottery, all organised by the Hong Kong Jockey Club, plus licensed mahjong parlours. Online casinos and offshore bookmakers are not authorised. Taking part in illegal gambling carries a maximum penalty of a HK$50,000 fine and nine months' imprisonment.

The minimum age is 18: the Government prohibits minors from gambling through licence conditions on the Jockey Club, which is required not to accept bets from juveniles.