Author: Daniel Williams

The UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) has announced its new 3-year Corporate Strategy to set out the regulator’s focus as it is still protecting the players and the wider public from possible gambling-related harm. The new Strategy has been released alongside the regulator’s Business Plan for 2021 to 2022. The UKGC shared that it will be delivered through five priority areas, including ensuring a fairer gambling market and more informed players; keeping criminal activity out of the UK gambling industry; improving gambling regulation; protecting underage and vulnerable individuals from gambling-related harm…

The Star Casino is taking a Singaporean billionaire to court after he fled the country after falling into a massive AU$40-million debt to the gambling operators in just three days. According to allegations, the well-known high-roller Yew Choy Wong dishonoured a blank cheque following a five-day losing streak while he played baccarat at The Star Gold Coast in July 2018. As revealed by the documents that the gambling company filed in the Queensland Supreme Court, the VIP player came to the casino after being brought there by a marketing junket.…

Denise Coates, the boss of the leading UK gambling operator bet365, has continued her string of record-breaking salary and dividend payments after receiving almost half a billion pounds in 2020. This took her total pay from 2016 until now to almost £1.3 billion. The gambling operator took an unusual delay when filing its accounts at Companies House but still, it became clear that the company’s highest-paid director – Ms Coates – was granted a total of £421-million salary and dividend payment last year. This makes an hourly payment of £48,000…

UK gambling operator Entain has revealed its intentions to put some further restrictions on problem gamblers and to unveil automated credit checks at a time when the local gambling sector is trying to improve its customer protection policies in an attempt to delay stricter regulation. Earlier today, the group, which is the owner of some of the most popular sports betting brands in the country – Ladbrokes and Coral – said that it would be the first gambling operator in the UK to launch personalised stake limits and credit checks…

Online casinos that offer their services without an Australian licence and target local gamblers have still not been suspended, although the country’s communications regulatory body has unveiled stricter enforcement policy against illegal gambling operators. Reportedly, ten online casinos that apparently target Australian gamblers with their services that are being run without an operating licence, can still be accessed by customers two months after the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) revealed for Guardian Australia that it had found that the platforms are part of the watchdog’s compliance priority activities. Many…

At a shareholder meeting set to take place later today, Premier League clubs are set to discuss the impact of their sponsorship agreements with gambling companies. A year ago, a House of Lords committee called for the UK Government to ban sponsorship deals between gambling operators and professional football clubs under which sports teams advertise their gambling sponsors on their kits as of 2023. The meeting will be held at a time when the UK Government is having a massive review of the country’s gambling legislation. The review was given…

The director of the British anti-gambling campaign group Clean Up Gambling, Matt Zarb Cousin, has called for Government action against Football Index after hearing multiple stories from customers who lost massive amounts of money as a result of the gambling operator’s collapse earlier this month. Mr Zarb-Cousin told JOE that the company’s crash had devastated tens of thousands of lives, with the losses accounting for hundreds of thousands of pounds. Surprisingly, on March 5th, Football Index made an announcement of a significant reduction in the payouts of its dividends –…

The gambling regulatory body of the state of New South Wales (NSW) has no intention of rushing any decision-making on the potential acquisition of Crown Resorts from Blackstone Group. It seems that the watchdog’s future actions may be very much affected by the report of Commissioner Bergin which found that local authorities need to consider a proper response to the findings about the Australian casino giant’s links to junket operators, money laundering and poor corporate governance. As Casino Guardian already reported, the US private equity firm Blackstone Group has approached…

The UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) has decided to publish more details about the background of its regulatory action into BetIndex Limited, trading as Football Index. The watchdog said it has focused the update particularly on the areas where it has received questions regarding its approach. The gambling regulatory body said that BetIndex Limited was given an operating licence for Remote General Betting Standard Real Event on September 9th, 2015. The UKGC shared that the company is also licenced by the Jersey gambling watchdog. The Commission explained that the current product…

According to media reports, the UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) received a warning in January 2020 that Football Index, the gambling operator that got its licence suspended a week ago, was a fraudulent pyramid scheme that operated masked as a football stock market. As revealed by The Guardian, at the time when this information was revealed to the gambling regulatory body, the UKGC was called to immediately take urgent action into the operations of the gambling platform in order to inform and protect the company’s users. Football Index started offering its…