Face-to-face-meetings are not a possibility here. But neither are they really possible through any organization for my son. There are some local (hospital/government) run online groups and message boards for gambling addicts here and he has used some of those resources. He also had a chance to participate in more intensive out-patient program shortly after his gambling and other things came to light. That was a good place to start. The program had one-on-one meetings with professionals, homework, online groups and few weekend 'camps.' Other than that there are less resources that deal with gambling per se. There are few some GA-groups but none are near there my son lives.
While gambling (sports betting, slot machines, mini-casinos and internet poker) is extremely common, popular and available where we live, damages problematic gambling produces are only slowly coming to the light and while gambling addiction is a topic that is currently getting more and more publicity, it has been slow to have more resources to deal with the problem. There have been some highly published cases there people in high power/very trusted positions have been committing frauds etc. to finance their gambling addiction and more gambling addicts have came out and talked about their problem so things may be changing.
To be totally honest I was almost relieved then I found out there is no GA groups in driving distance from there my son lives. If there was, he would had been probably coerced to participate and while I'm sure AA etc. approach works for some people, I had doubts for my son. Scientific approach that emphasizes the individual's ability to control their behaviour through learning certain mental systems etc. is much more approachable for him. Especially when he is very used to using some similar type of mental strategies in his sport. I also have a close friend who had a major drinking problem and was coerced to participate to AA for two years. She felt it was very dogmatic, had a real problem with the most main concepts and seemed to regress to very rebellious teen (she was in her thirties and still highly functioning despite her drinking) and her problems got much worse during that time. After she could quit going to AA, she got bit better and some years latter she quit drinking on her own. It may well be, she was not ready at the time she participated on AA but knowing her, the approach would had been problematic for her also when she was ready to quit. And considering what kind of person my son is (and that he in fact still is a rebellious teen), I anticipated same kind of outcome if he would had been coerced to GA.