UKGC fines Betfair and Paddy Power £490k

UKGC fines Betfair and Paddy Power £490k

Added:
UKGC fines Betfair and Paddy Power £490k

The parent company of Betfair and Paddy Power, PPB Counterparty Services, has been issued a penalty of almost half a million pounds from the Gambling Commission.

The UKGC issued the penalty to the operator for targeting vulnerable players with its advertisements. The regulator stated that on the 21st of November 2021, the company pushed notifications to the devices of self-excluded players, both those registered with Gamstop and excluded from the operator alone, promoting enhanced wagering odds for a match of the Premier League.

This goes against the commission’s rules that aim to prevent gambling promotions from reaching vulnerable players to protect them from further gambling harms, which drove the UKGC to issue the penalty.

The UKGC’s Operations Executive Director, Kay Roberts, commented:

“Despite there being no evidence that this breach was intentional, that all self-excluded gamblers saw the violating notification, or that any vulnerable players were allowed to place bets, we take violations like these seriously. We would like to advise all of our locally licensed operators to learn from PPB’s experience and ensure that their systems excluding vulnerable users from promotional messages are not prone to failure.”

This penalty follows another recent enforcement action, as part of which the commission fined the gambling operator Skill On Net just over 300 thousand pounds. It also follows the regulator’s recent introduction of its new Evidence Gaps and Priorities initiative, which has set our a path for the commission’s evidence collection efforts for the upcoming three years.

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