Sky Bet has been assessed a £1 million penalty package for failing to protect vulnerable customers on self-exclusion lists according to the UK Gambling Commission.
The commission said Sky Bet allowed players to continue to open accounts and saw the company continue to market to players who had self-excluded.
According to the commission:
736 self-excluded customers were able to open and use duplicate accounts to gamble
About 50,000 self-excluded customers received marketing material by email, mobile text or a push notification within a mobile app
36,748 self-excluded customers did not have their account balance funds returned to them on account closure.
“This was a serious failure affecting thousands of potentially vulnerable customers and the £1 million penalty package should serve as a warning to all gambling businesses,” said Richard Watson, program director for the commission in a press release. “Protecting consumers from gambling-related harm is a priority for us and where we see operators failing in their responsibility to keep their customers safe we will take tough action.”
Watson also said “Sky Bet reported the issues to us quickly, cooperated with us and has taken this investigation seriously.”
“We have always taken responsible gambling and player protection very seriously but this incident showed that we needed to do more,” said Richard Flint, chief executive of Sky Betting & Gaming in the release. “When we spotted the issue we pro-actively notified the Gambling Commission and have worked to improve our processes to avoid this happening again.
“We could and should have made it harder for self-excluded customers to open duplicate accounts with us and for that we are sorry. We fully agree with the Gambling Commission’s findings and will donate the agreed sum to charities for socially responsible purposes,” he said.
In another story involving exclusion lists, Paddy Power has launched an electronic self-exclusion process for their betting shops to replace the current paper-based system.
The in-shop app stores the customer’s image and contact information and automatically distributes their profile to up to ten Paddy Power shops in their area, the company said in a press release.
The new process will be available in all UK Paddy Power shops by June 2018 and will also be launched across all Paddy Power shops in Ireland later in the year, the release said.
