Sky Bet fined £1m by the Gambling Commission for self-exclusion failings
Regulator says weakness in the operator's self-exclusion facilities was a "serious failure affecting thousands of potentially vulnerable customers"
Sky Betting & Gaming (SB&G) has been handed a £1m financial penalty by the UK Gambling Commission for a number of self-exclusion failings.
The regulator this morning announced it had reached a voluntary Regulatory Settlement with the Yorkshire-based operator, which reported its failings to the Commission in 2016.
According to a statement, weaknesses identified in Sky Bet’s self-exclusion facilities led to 736 self-excluded customers being able to open and use duplicate accounts to gamble.
The failings also meant approximately 50,000 self-excluded customers received marketing material by email, mobile text or a push notification within a mobile app, while 36,748 self-excluded customers did not have their account balance funds returned to them on account closure.
Richard Watson, programme director at the Gambling Commission, said: “This was a serious failure affecting thousands of potentially vulnerable customers and the £1m penalty package should serve as a warning to all gambling businesses.
“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.
“Sky Bet reported the issues to us quickly, cooperated with us and has taken this investigation seriously.”
Richard Flint, SB&G CEO, added: “We have always taken responsible gambling and player protection very seriously but this incident showed that we needed to do more.
“When we spotted the issue we pro-actively notified the Gambling Commission and have worked to improve our processes to avoid this happening again.”
Read Flint’s statement in full here.