ShareBonne Terre Limited, operating as Sky Betting and Gaming, was fined £1.17 million ($1.54 million) by the UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) for sending a Sky Vegas advertising email campaign to susceptible clients.
In a press release on Thursday, the commission noted that on November 2, users who had self-excluded (41,395 people) and opted out of receiving promotional emails received a free casino spins special deal from Flutter-owned brand Sky Vegas (249,159). According to British gaming expert Rob Davies, the announcement comes at "a crucial moment" for the UK gambling sector.
Breaking: SkyVegas fined £1.2m for sending free casino “spins” to recovering addicts during Safer Gambling Week.
— Rob Davies (@ByRobDavies) March 9, 2022
Comes at a sensitive time for the British gambling industry, which has been at pains to show it has improved its attitude to social responsibility. [1/n]
Sky Vegas offered the promo to vulnerable clients amid the UK's Safer Gambling Week, akin to writing a giant "kick me" letter on its own back. The sanction adds another grain to the mill ahead of the UK government's significant review of the Gambling Act 2005. The commission will release its regulatory recommendations in a white paper in the coming weeks.
"We would encourage all operators to learn from Sky Betting and Gaming's expensive mistakes," UKGC CEO Andrew Rhodes said in a Tuesday statement.
Although Flutter UK and Ireland CEO Conor Grant expressed regret for the Sky Vegas mistakes in November, his expression of guilt had no significant impact.
"We take our responsibility to protect customers very seriously," Grant said in an interview with The Guardian on Wednesday. "But in this case, we didn't do enough."
Grant's most recent guilty plea was that his firm recognized the UKGC's conclusions and had "put in place steps to guarantee that this does not happen again."
Sky Vegas has to be honest with the UKGC because the $1.54 million fine "would have been much higher had Sky Betting & Gaming allowed any of the self-excluded clients to bet, refused to comply, and failed to take meaningful steps to avoid a repeat."
Multiple Fines in the Industry
However, the glaring issue is the damage this blunder might do to the industry. Since the beginning of the year, the UKGC has fined other major gambling companies £16.37 million ($21.65 million) for failing to safeguard susceptible clients.
The UKGC fined 888 UK Limited £9.4 million ($12.6 million) on March 1 for money laundering and social responsibility failures, one of the most significant fines the regulatory agency has ever imposed. Mishaps along similar lines resulted in the UKGC fining BetVictor £2m ($2.7m) in February and European online casino behemoth Genesis Global £3.8m ($5.1m) in January.
Sky Vegas' latest blunder was described as "utterly scandalous" by former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith. He also said that the sector could not help people at risk of getting "sucked further into the vortex of debt."
Given the impending release of the government's white paper, providing doom-mongers like Duncan Smith with this type of ammunition at this point is the very last thing the sector needs.
