UK gambling firms pay record USD 25 M in penalty packages

The UK Gambling Commission announced Thursday the release of its 2018/19 Enforcement Report. The regulator said operators’ systematic failures have led to tougher action by the Commission.

As stated in the ‘Raising Standards for Consumers Enforcement Report’, gambling businesses and those who lead them need to improve the support they offer consumers who are at risk of harm and do more to guard against money laundering.

Over the last 12 months, the Commission has carried out more than 160 investigations.  Enforcement action has resulted in a variety of sanctions against operators and their senior management. A total of nine operators have paid £19.6m (USD 24.9 M) in penalty packages because they failed to follow Commission rules, including Flutter Entertainment — formerly known as Paddy Power Betfair; £13m of the money went to the Treasury while £6.7m was used to compensate consumers and other affected parties.

As revealed by the report, the total fines increased from £18.4m in 2017 and £1.7m the year before. The biggest single fine last year, £7.1m, was paid by online casino company Daub Alderney for failing to sufficiently monitor its customers for both money laundering and problem gambling.

"We will be tough when we find operators bending the rules or failing to meet our expectations, but we also want to try and minimize the need for such action by providing advice, a program of support material and compliance activity to help operators get things right in the first place," the Gambling Commission’s chief executive Neil McArthur said. "I want gambling consumers in Britain to be able to enjoy the fairest and safest gambling in the world and I want gambling operators to work with us to put customer enjoyment and safety at the top of their corporate agenda."

Today we have published our Enforcement Report 2018/19, the Report provides an overview of the enforcement work we have undertaken over the past year and sets out future lessons for operators. Read more: https://t.co/U7zPjx6enU pic.twitter.com/TshYICMnYh

— Gambling Commission (@GamRegGB) 27 de junio de 2019

As reported by the Financial Times, betting companies have come under increasingly stringent regulation in the UK following the 2014 Gambling Act, which stipulated that all companies providing gambling services to customers in the UK had to be licensed by the commission whether they were headquartered abroad or in the UK.

Interest in regulation of the sector increased last year after the success of a campaign to cut the maximum stake permitted on fixed-odds betting terminals, a kind of electronic slot machine, from £100 to £2.

Since the FOBT stake cut, larger gambling companies have put forward their own measures to reduce harm from gambling. In December, major bookmakers, including Flutter, GVC and William Hill, agreed a “whistle-to-whistle” advertising ban on all live sport.

Last week they also proposed a tenfold increase in a voluntary levy they pay to fund help for problem gamblers.