Gibraltar fire takes egaming firms offline
Disruption on busy Easter Sunday hits operators with many left out of action for hours, as others praised contingency plans that kept them online
The government of Gibraltar has launched an immediate enquiry after a number of online gambling companies suffered significant downtime on Easter Sunday following a fire at Gibraltar’s Waterport Power Station.
Operators including William Hill, Ladbrokes, bwin.party, Stan James and Betfred were impacted after a generator at the power station suffered a mechanical fault in the midst of a busy Sunday afternoon’s sporting action, triggering a fire that destroyed one power generator and damaged the remaining two.
The subsequent power outage caused other infrastructure on the island to fail, with Gibtele, one of the Gibraltar’s largest telecoms providers, particularly hard hit.
Power initially fell just after 1pm BST, during the middle of the first of three Easter Sunday Barclays Premier League kick-offs.
William Hill was one of the operators most severely impacted by the incident with customers unable to access the William Hill online site for several hours on Sunday and services not restored until late in the evening.
Jem Maidment, spokesperson for the operator, told eGaming Review this morning that it was too early to say what the financial cost of the incident was but said services were now up and running normally.
“Throughout we have been in close contact with our power providers and have been working hard to restore all services,” Maidment said. “Everything is pretty much back to normal.”
“Importantly, we want to thank our customers for their patience and understanding and apologise for any inconvenience,” Maidment added.
The incident did cause Ladbrokes’ online site offline and a spokesman confirmed it was impacted “for a time” but the operator said it was able to restore full service during the afternoon.
Contrary to reports, Betfair said it had not been affected by the fire as it houses its operation centres away from Gibraltar, while BetVictor and Coral said they had been largely unaffected by the event.
“[It was a] very busy day of football and with the three Premier League favourites obliging the day was costly, but we were delighted that our back up plans enabled us to carry on as normal,” Charlie McCann, spokesperson for BetVictor, said.
Disgruntled customers unable to place bets took to Twitter to vent their frustrations.
Apologies are understood to have been made to gambling companies by the government of Gibraltar, with an investigation into the incident currently underway.
Offices shared by William Hill and Betfred, located beside the power station, had been evacuated as a precaution; however no injuries were reported.