Everyone in the gambling industry saw this coming and now it has become realty. Today, gambling company Ladbrokes Coral Gets Hit with a £5.9m Penalty by the U.K. Gambling Commission. According to sports betting news, this is because of multiple failures to protect vulnerable gamblers.
Last year, Ladbrokes made the news because it became under investigation by the Gambling Commission due to misdoings with customers. This time around, they are paying the price and must fulfill their social responsibilities and obligations
Repeatedly Failing to Protect Consumers
Richard Watson, the commission’s executive director said Ladbrokes will pay a £5.9m penalty over multiple failures to help problem gamblers. This is because they did not take proper steps to help problem gamblers from losing large sums of money. In addition, this includes neglecting to ask customers about their source of income after losing substantial amount of money.
Watson also said that “These were systemic failings at a large operator, resulting in the harm of consumers”. Furthermore, this also includes “stolen money flowing though the business” and it is unacceptable the UK Gambling Commission.
Furthermore, the Gambling Commission said that when they did identify gamblers with problems, they did not stop them from betting. According to the investigation, the failures to be socially responsible took place between 2014 and 2017.
In addition, Betting Odds providers say that the sportsbook could not provide evidence of being socially responsible with problem gamblers. Thus, customers who made several large deposits over short period of time were never contacted.
According to sports news coverage, GVC, the new owners of Ladbrokes will have to pay £4.8m towards responsible gambling causes. This is in addition to forfeiting £1.1m to other parties that lost money or were affected by their irresponsible actions.
The Gambling Commission did say that GVC did cooperate with their investigation. Furthermore, they also made an acceptable settlement proposal to them. Thus, Ladbrokes Coral Gets Hit with a £5.9m Penalty is part of their proposal.
