Betting companies make a big show about responsible gambling.
Back in October Peter Jackson, who leads Flutter Entertainment – the parent company of Paddy Power and Betfair – spoke about how his company is “determined to lead” in the area. The interview is prominently reported on Flutter’s own website.
Jackson – who was paid more than €19 million in salary and bonuses last year – also talks about the “Flutter Edge” which allows the company to develop and refine tech advances in one part of the business and roll them out globally, including when it comes to responsible gambling.
[ Paddy Power fined by UK regulator over problem gamblingOpens in new window ]
Given that, what to make of the UK Gambling Commission fining Paddy Power and Betfair £2 million (€2.3 million) on Wednesday?
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The details are horrifying, and reinforce the worst ideas about industrialised online betting. The commission’s report is worth quoting at length.
Among the failings, the company did not have systems sensitive enough to “identify indicators of harm with one customer depositing £12,000 during a 15-day period before being identified for review and another depositing £25,000 in 25 days before being interacted with”.
Another “lost £12,300 in five weeks before being identified for an interaction”.
Meanwhile “one customer staked £86,000 over a 16-day period during which time they lost £6,000. Despite the high velocity of spend, no manual review of the account took place.”
Another “displayed concerning behaviour in terms of intense spikes in activity without interaction, with their longest session throughout a 17-day period being seven hours and 46 minutes during which they placed over 300 bets amounting to £20,000. Their gambling behaviour was only identified as an indicator of harm after hitting a loss trigger at which time the account was manually reviewed.”
Paddy Power and Betfair co-operated fully with the investigation, implemented an action plan and accepted their failings early on. Yet as the commission said, “this immediate response is the minimum we expect from operators”.
Is this a one off? Clearly not – the UK regulator fined the company in 2023 for marketing to vulnerable customers.
Perhaps Flutter’s own tech isn’t up to scratch and needs investment to stop this happening again. Maybe the company should invest more in staff on the issue of responsible gambling.
But what if Flutter isn’t bothered about these fines when it’s made $478 million in adjusted Ebitda for the third quarter of the year?
Jackson says all the right things when it comes to responsible gambling. Yet actions speak louder than words. In this case, his company’s actions speak volumes.
