Teddy Sagi’s Ambitious Move: Listing Winvia Entertainment in the UK

Teddy Sagi, the multi-millionaire entrepreneur behind Playtech, is making headlines once again with his latest venture. This time, he is set to list Winvia Entertainment, a prize draw company, in the UK. Teddy Sagi is a name synonymous with success in the gaming industry. Born in 1972 in Israel, Sagi founded Playtech in 1999, which has since become one of the largest online gaming software suppliers globally.

Sagi’s journey is marked by several key milestones, including the successful IPO of Playtech on the London Stock Exchange in 2006. His ability to identify and capitalise on emerging trends has been pivotal in his career, and his latest venture with Winvia Entertainment is no exception.

The Vision Behind Winvia Entertainment

Winvia Entertainment aims to revolutionise the prize draw sector by offering a unique platform that combines entertainment with the thrill of winning. The company focuses on providing a transparent and engaging experience for users, ensuring that every participant feels valued.

Sagi’s vision for Winvia is to create a community where players can enjoy the excitement of prize draws while also having the opportunity to win substantial rewards. This aligns with the growing demand for interactive and engaging online experiences, particularly among younger audiences.

The UK has a robust regulatory framework governing online draws, which provides a level of security and trust for players. The UK Gambling Commission oversees the industry, ensuring that operators adhere to strict guidelines. This regulatory environment is conducive for new companies like Winvia, as it fosters consumer confidence and encourages responsible practices.

Winvia’s Unique Selling Proposition

Winvia Entertainment differentiates itself from traditional prize draw companies through its innovative model. The platform offers a variety of prize draws, ranging from cash prizes to luxury items, all designed to appeal to a broad audience.

Moreover, Winvia employs a transparent system that allows participants to track their entries and understand the odds of winning. This level of transparency is crucial in building trust with users the company says, especially in an industry often scrutinised for its fairness.

Community Engagement

Another key aspect of Winvia’s strategy is its focus on community engagement. The company plans to implement features that allow users to interact with one another, share experiences, and celebrate wins together. This sense of community is expected to enhance user loyalty and encourage repeat participation.

As Winvia Entertainment prepares for its listing in the UK, the company is undergoing a thorough evaluation of its operations and financials. This process is essential to ensure that it meets the stringent requirements set by the London Stock Exchange.

The listing of Winvia Entertainment is expected to have a considerable impact on the prize draw market in the UK. It will not only introduce a new player into the sector but also stimulate competition among existing operators. Looking ahead, Winvia Entertainment has ambitious plans for expansion. The company aims to diversify its offerings and explore international markets.

Unibet Owner Fined £10 Million Over AML Failings

The UK Gambling Commission has just announced a £10 million fine to Platinum Gaming Limited, see below for full announcement:

A gambling business will pay a £10 million penalty after a Gambling Commission investigation revealed Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and social responsibility failings.

Platinum Gaming Limited – which operates unibet.co.uk and uk.bingo.com – will also receive a warning and have to undergo a third-party audit to ensure it is effectively implementing its anti-money laundering and safer gambling policies, procedures and controls.

Social responsibility failures included:

- employing a customer interaction system which failed to identify a player as at risk of harm despite the player losing £5,000 within 24 hours of registration and going on to lose more than £16,000 in less than three months.
- not interacting with a consumer who lost over £31,000 within nine months, hit their monthly loss limit on six occasions, and demonstrated markers of harm associated with high velocity gambling.
- not identifying a consumer who exceeded their £2,500 loss limit within 16 minutes of registering their account as potentially being at risk of harm. The operator also failed to identify binge gambling.
- not interacting with a customer during a 23-day period in which they staked £73,000 and lost £4,100.

Anti-money laundering failures included:

- the Licensee’s money laundering/terrorist financing risk assessment failed to take into account customers whose account(s) had been closed by the Licensee due to money laundering or terrorist funding concerns prior to 2023. This enabled some customers whose accounts had been blocked to open new accounts and gamble.
- the AML policy in place at the time lacked clarity around the level of customer due-diligence and enhanced customer due-diligence measures conducted and how this was determined by the level of risk displayed by a customer.
- despite being covered in the Licensee’s risk assessment, there was no evidence that potential high-risk factors such as high-risk occupation, high levels of transactions through deposits and withdrawals and a high level of loss, had been considered when customer reviews were undertaken.

This is the second occasion Platinum Gaming have faced enforcement action – in 2023 they were fined £2.9m for social responsibility and anti-money laundering failures.

John Pierce, Commission Director of Enforcement, said: “While industry wide progress has been made in reducing unchecked high spending, the failings at Platinum Gaming are particularly disappointing. The case revealed serious shortcomings in customer interaction systems, including failures to identify and act on clear markers of harm. These included consumers losing thousands within hours or days of registration, repeatedly breaching loss limits, and exhibiting patterns of binge and high-velocity gambling without appropriate intervention.

“Significant anti-money laundering failures were also identified. These included gaps in the licensee’s risk assessment, which failed to account for previously blocked accounts linked to money laundering concerns, and a lack of clarity in the AML policy around due diligence thresholds. Customer reviews did not consistently consider high-risk factors, despite these being outlined in the licensee’s own framework.”

He continued: “Alongside the £10 million financial penalty this operator is required to conduct a follow-up independent audit and internal investigation – providing regular updates to the Commission. These added conditions are designed to drive meaningful change, reinforce accountability, and embed a culture of compliance.

“Senior leaders must take ownership of compliance outcomes and ensure lessons are embedded across the organisation, supported by structured reporting and board level oversight – and further regulatory activity will remain a possibility.”

Paddy Power Plans To Close 57 Betting Shops

The high street betting business is facing another significant shake-up as Paddy Power, has announced plans to close 57 of its betting shops. The decision, which affects nearly 250 jobs, has raised concerns about the future of retail betting in the UK and Ireland.

On October 14, Paddy Power’s parent company, Flutter Entertainment, confirmed the closure of 57 shops, which constitutes approximately 10% of its total estate of 608 betting outlets across the UK and Ireland.

Job Losses and Economic Impact

The impending closures will put around 250 jobs at risk, a significant concern for the affected employees and their families. The announcement comes at a time when the high street is already grappling with numerous challenges, including changing consumer habits and increased competition from online betting platforms.

Flutter Entertainment has stated that while the closures are not directly linked to the upcoming Autumn Budget, the potential for increased gambling taxes could further strain the industry. The company has expressed concerns that higher taxes may lead to job losses and reduced investment in the sector, ultimately pushing customers towards unregulated operators.

Betting Shop Closures

The announcement from Paddy Power is not an isolated incident. The betting industry has seen a dramatic decline in the number of retail outlets over the past decade. According to recent statistics, the total number of betting shops in the UK and Ireland has decreased by a third since 2017, falling from nearly 10,000 to just over 6,600.

Several factors contribute to this decline:

- Increased Online Competition: The rise of online betting platforms has significantly altered consumer behaviour, with many punters opting for the convenience of betting from home.
- Regulatory Changes: Stricter regulations and potential tax hikes have created an uncertain environment for betting operators, leading to a reassessment of their retail strategies.
- Changing Consumer Preferences: Younger generations are increasingly favouring digital experiences over traditional retail, prompting many companies to adapt their business models accordingly.

Flutter Entertainment’s Strategy Moving Forward

Despite the closures, Flutter Entertainment remains committed to its high street presence. A spokesperson for the company stated that they are continually reviewing their retail estate to ensure it meets the evolving needs of customers. The company aims to innovate and invest in areas that align with changing consumer trends.

Flutter has indicated that it will explore new ways to engage customers, potentially through enhanced in-store experiences or technology integration. This approach aims to attract foot traffic and retain customers who may otherwise turn to online alternatives.

The upcoming Autumn Budget, set to be announced by Chancellor Rachel Reeves, is expected to address the taxation of gambling operators, the fear is that a large tax hike would affect gambling operators to close more betting shops as a consequence.

There is growing pressure from various political factions to increase taxes on betting companies, with some Labour MPs advocating for rates as high as 50%. While the government argues that gambling companies should contribute their “fair share” to the economy, industry leaders warn that excessive taxation could have detrimental effects on jobs and investment especially on betting shops.

The ultimate gambler? How Denise Coates became Britain’s richest woman

Any motorist or dog-walker traversing the narrow lanes around Denise Coates’ home in Cheshire would most likely stray within range of one of the many CCTV cameras that jut out from the surrounding foliage. These towering hedgerows, interrupted by sturdy security fences, hide not a military base or a top secret research facility but a family home, albeit one of immense proportions.

The 21-hectare (52-acre) estate is large enough to accommodate landing space for the helicopters that neighbours have seen ferrying people in and out. Inside the gates, there is a lake, boathouse, tennis courts, horse stables and a treehouse with a zip wire, according to local planning applications and architectural plans.

The owner of this complex is Britain’s richest woman and the multi-billionaire mastermind behind the Bet365 online gambling empire. Coates’ renown is such that one expert says people in the gambling industry rarely even refer to Bet365, but simply “Denise”. “It’s an indicator of her almost mythical status,” says Alun Bowden, a gambling consultant at Eilers & Krejcik Gaming, which provides research for the industry. “Nobody tries to copy her, because there is no point. You can’t. She’s unique.”

Coates’ status has not deterred unkind comments from some neighbours. One says her home looks like a Tesco Extra superstore. No, says another, it’s “more like an Aldi depot”.

All in all, the house and grounds in which Coates, her husband and their five children live are estimated to have cost close to £90m. Building began in 2019 and did not stop until this year. The project was overseen by the practice of renowned architect Norman Foster, the man behind London’s Gherkin, Wembley Stadium and Berlin’s Reichstag. It hasn’t won Coates too many friends in the area. Months of road closures have infuriated drivers and horse-riding enthusiasts. One local, who described the work as a “pain in the arse”, says: “At least she retarmacked the road – but she could have brought round a bottle of wine.”

Still, there were millions on the table for neighbours who were willing to sell up. Coates spent more than £8.5m buying surrounding land so she couldn’t be overlooked – and many local farmers took the money. However, Coates is shrewd. One neighbour says they ended up in a stalemate with her after refusing a bid for their land. “She’s a clever woman,” they said. “She’ll offer more than it’s worth but not 10 times more.”

However, other than those directly affected by Coates’ building work, there aren’t many people in and around Stoke-on-Trent with a bad word to say about her. Stoke is an agglomeration of six towns that once sat at the heart of the global pottery industry, home to Wedgwood, Portmeirion and Spode. Ceramics delivered prosperity to the region in the 18th century, while coal and steel brought more growth as the Industrial Revolution progressed. But the slow decline of British industry saw the boom times vanish and Stoke declined with it. The emergence of Bet365 has been one of the city’s rare recent success stories.

Bet365 “directly and indirectly” supports about 12,000 jobs in the city, says Mark Gregory, a former chief economist at global accounting giant EY, who was born and raised in Stoke. His estimate includes jobs at Stoke City football club, which is owned by Coates’ brother John. That’s about “10% of employment”, he says. “And because it’s a higher-wage company, even more than that in terms of value.”

“They’re a huge generator of wealth locally,” says Jeff Nash, who owns the local office and hospitality complex Potbank, on the site of the former Spode pottery factory. “If you’re a graduate, you can look at Bet365 and want to stay in Stoke. That’s the future.”

Andy Jackson, who runs creative agency i-Creation from an office in Potbank, praises the work Coates has put in to improve maths skills in the city, including funding for a scheme to attract maths teachers in partnership with the council. “She was really clear about 10 years ago that for Bet365 to have a talent pool to work for them, numeracy was important. They put their money where their mouth was.”

But perhaps the most reputation-enhancing investment the Coates family made was when they bought Stoke City FC for £1.7m in 2006. It has always been very much a family affair: Peter was joint chairman with Denise’s brother John, until a restructuring that saw John take full control of the club this year. Denise’s husband, Richard, is responsible for the stadium and training ground. The family’s smart stewardship and financial muscle helped elevate Stoke up a division to the Premier League in 2008, where they stayed for a decade before relegation in 2018. The Coates family does not just bankroll the team – it even pays for free travel for fans who want to attend away games.

Few of those fans will have followed Stoke for longer than 81-year-old Nigel Johnson, a former schoolteacher turned football commentator who covered Stoke for the BBC over more than five decades until his retirement last year. Johnson says he is grateful for the “fantastic amount of money” that the Coates family has pumped into the club he loves.

Denise Coates was born and bred in the Stoke area, and the seat of her family power remains here, in the shape of a sparkling, 2,400-seat headquarters proudly displaying the Bet365 name to passing traffic, as it rises from the centre of a sprawling complex that also includes a training centre.

Coates was 33 when she began building her online betting empire in 2000 from a portable building in a car park in the city. Within a few years she transformed the British gambling landscape, recognising that the future lay not in high street bookies but online – allowing users around the world to place bets at any hour of day or night, every day of the year. Perhaps her biggest coup was Bet365’s development and perfection of in-play betting, a product that invites punters to wager in real time on minute-by-minute action, such as who will win the next corner in a football match, or the next point in a game of tennis. It is now the most ubiquitous form of online gambling.

It has certainly made Coates rich. Together with her family, the 57-year-old is estimated to be worth £7.5bn, according to the latest Sunday Times Rich List. She is almost as famous for her record-breaking pay packets as her entrepreneurial talent. In 2021, she took home £469m. This year, it was £271m. In total, she has extracted about £2.5bn in pay and dividends from the company.

Denise was, from a young age, very good with numbers. David Owen, who taught Coates maths in the 1980s at Sandbach High School, told the BBC that she was a “top-of-the-range” student. “If we were talking Mensa, she’d be in the top 1% … She was going somewhere.”

Her father, Peter, the son of a miner, was a moderately successful local businessman who made his money in the catering industry, serving up burgers and pies to hungry fans at football stadiums (Coates’ mother, Deirdre, is a director of the family catering business now). Peter also owned a string of betting shops – Provincial Racing – where Coates worked during her holidays. It was here that she honed her business acumen, working as a cashier and gaining an intuitive understanding of how bets were priced and what kept punters coming back.

She graduated from the University of Sheffield with a first-class econometrics degree and returned to Stoke, where she sought to move her dad’s gambling business online. She bought the domain name Bet365.com from eBay for $25,000, borrowed £15m against the Coates family’s bricks-and-mortar stores, and invested it all in sports betting technology.

By 2005, Bet365 had sold off its high street shops – for £40m – to focus entirely on its web offering, which would expand beyond sports betting to casino games such as roulette and digital slot machines. The timing could not have been better. First, Labour introduced a broadly permissive overhaul of Britain’s gambling laws in 2005, triggering a surge in marketing and advertising that dragged betting out of the realm of smoke-filled bookmakers and firmly into the mainstream. The arrival of the smartphone – the iPhone hit the market in 2007 – would soon put a casino in every pocket.

Before long, Bet365.com was bringing in punters in their droves, leaving established but slower-moving rivals such as Ladbrokes and William Hill struggling to catch up. In the 2006-07 financial year, the last before Labour’s reform of gambling laws took effect, Bet365 booked revenues of £91m. By 2012, the year Coates was awarded a CBE for services to the community and business, they had reached £648m. Last year, it soared past the £3bn mark. Savvy marketing helped it along its way, especially the ubiquitous slots during football broadcasts, featuring the actor Ray Winstone, who began urging fans to “Bet in play, now” in 2009.

The company no longer discloses how many wagers are placed on its products, but the last time it did, in 2018-19, £64bn worth of bets were made worldwide in just one year. The Gambling Commission estimated the total volume of all online wagers placed in Britain that year at £118bn.

Head just one mile north of the Bet365 headquarters on the A53 and you will come to the West Midlands Gambling Harms Clinic. Here, wedged into a few low-ceilinged rooms of a community health centre, experts sift through the human wreckage left behind by companies such as Bet365. There may be more than a million people with a gambling problem in Britain, including 55,000 children, according to estimates. Punters’ losses, worth £11bn a year to the gambling industry, are disproportionately skewed towards more economically deprived areas, such as Stoke.

The clinic in Stoke opened in October 2022, part of a nationwide rollout of new NHS clinics for people suffering from addiction and other gambling-related harm. Demand for their services has risen dramatically in recent years. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the NHS warned that it was being left to “pick up the pieces” of the gambling industry. Experts have been particularly vocal about the boom of online gambling, in particular in-play betting and products such as digital slot machines, which are designed to deploy an arsenal of psychological tricks to boost profits.

“These features have been called ‘addiction by design’,” says Prof Heather Wardle of the University of Glasgow, one of the UK’s leading experts on gambling-related harm. “The features which make these games so immersive are the same features which make them harmful.” According to Citizens Advice, some 18% – or 3.3 million – of online gamblers in Britain are in debt, owing £10,000 on average. In 2021, Public Health England estimated that there are 400 gambling-related suicides each year in England alone: more than one every day.

I meet Mark on a Zoom call at the Stoke gambling harms clinic, where he is a client. He is in his late 30s, and came into some money after he and his ex-wife divorced and sold their home. He had always gambled in bookmakers but during the pandemic, when shops were shut, he started gambling online, something he’d never done before. He soon found that the online experience was far more intense. “It’s the casino in your pocket that never goes away. You can do it on the toilet, at work, on your lunch break, at home while watching TV, in bed when you wake up. So Covid didn’t help because I needed the escape.”

For a gambling problem to start to become an addiction, “you need time, you need money and you need opportunity,” he says. “Now I had all three, it was a recipe for disaster.” The exact amount Mark lost over the course of 18 months, is irrelevant, he says. “It was tens of thousands, but if I’d had a million I’d have gambled that. I would lose a month’s salary in a few minutes.”

At the time, he and his new partner were each saving for a deposit on a house together. Mark lost the lot. Telling her that the money was gone was “the hardest thing I’ve ever done, including watching my dad die. Her initial reaction was shock because she didn’t understand. Not one single other person knew … Gambling wants you on your own. It was the dirty little secret.”

Clinics such as the West Midlands one where Mark is being treated have a colossal task on their hands to mop up the industry’s collateral damage. The annual budget for all 15 new NHS clinics is just £6.75m. Or, to put it another way, less than a day’s worth of revenue at Bet365.

Sammy, also in his late 30s, is another client here, and a former customer of Bet365, among other operators. Sammy grew up surrounded by gambling, whether it was horse racing, 2p pushers at the funfair or fruit machines in the pub. But it was online casino games that tipped him over the edge. “I opened accounts in my mum’s name, my dad’s, my brother’s. I had credit cards with different limits,” he says. “When you’re a gambler, you’ll find a way.”

Sammy’s particular favourite was online games of blackjack – he loved the thrill of winning or losing within a matter of seconds. “ I remember the excitement of having £5,000 at the tip of my fingers. I used to kid myself that I could turn it into £50,000.”

Like many gamblers, Sammy tried to quit. But gambling companies know what works to retain customers. One of the most controversial tactics online businesses offer is “free” spins and bonuses. “They’d do everything and anything they can to keep you gambling. And you think it’s fine because you’re not using your own money, but then you do start using your own money.

“I joined about 20 to 25 companies because they’d match your deposit. My thought process was that if I join 10 companies and deposit £50 into each, I’ve doubled my money straight away. And that’s how they entice you in.”

One month, Sammy used his month’s salary to build up winnings of about £2,000. Inevitably, he lost it. “I used both mine and my wife’s wages to get it back. And then I lost that. I remember thinking: I’ve got no funds, I’m going to have to tell my wife. There was nothing left for the month … I’d have to take out another loan.” It was a Sunday night and his wife was giving their two young children a bath. “My heart was pounding out of my chest. I thought: ‘It’s now or never.’ I couldn’t find another way out. I just said: ‘I’ve got a gambling addiction.’”

Sammy is benefiting from treatment at the West Midlands clinic but still finds it hard to escape the relentless bombardment of gambling adverts. A massive Liverpool FC fan, he is surrounded by club memorabilia when we speak online. He believes he sees more gambling advertising because of his online activities. “I see it on Twitter all the time – famous footballers doing ads for bookmakers. You think you can get away from it, but it’s everywhere. Join now and get a bonus boost, or whatever.”

The gambling industry, and Bet365 in particular, has targeted football relentlessly. Gambling adverts saturate TV, radio and podcasts and scroll relentlessly across pitchside hoardings in stadiums. Most clubs now have an official betting partner and some have even taken a cut of fans’ losses under commercial arrangements with sponsors. The demographic, young and male, also happens to be the cohort most likely to suffer from a gambling addiction – not just the fans but the players, too.

Some players have no choice but to wear betting companies’ logos on the front of their shirts, despite several high-profile cases of star footballers – from Michael Owen to Wayne Rooney – speaking publicly about their struggles with gambling addiction. Nowhere is the symbiotic relationship more evident than at Stoke City FC, which is owned by the Bet365 group and plays at the Bet365 stadium, where the players run out with Bet365 emblazoned across their chests.

Bet365 may be hard to escape in Britain, particularly for football fans, but Denise Coates keeps a much lower profile. The last time Britain’s most successful businesswoman gave an interview was to the Guardian, 12 years ago. She does not often make public appearances or speak at business conferences. Bet365 is a private business, so there are no annual shareholder meetings. The rare times she is seen are in publicity images announcing donations made by her charity, the Denise Coates Foundation. And so this vacuum of information has been filled by myth-making.

One oft-repeated line features an Aston Martin DB9 sports car, with a personalised number plate, that is sometimes spotted in the Bet365 car park. The car appears in almost every written profile of Coates, a totem for a billionaire’s apparent flamboyance. However, according to one person close to Coates, who has asked not to be named, the story is “completely untrue”. The car does exist, but it is not hers – it’s a close family member’s. “She likes being anonymous,” says the source. “The idea she’d have an Aston Martin with DC365 on the numberplate, driving around Stoke, is so far opposite of what she’s like. She’s a very low-profile sort of person.”

In many ways, Coates is a woman of multiple contradictions. On the one hand, she is a poster child for corporate excess, with her staggering pay packets. On the other, she is one of Britain’s biggest taxpayers – choosing to put most of her vast income through Bet365’s payroll rather than hiding it away from tax authorities like many other billionaires.

To some, she has built her vast fortune creating and marketing blatantly addictive gambling products, shattering the lives of punters and their families. And yet she puts a considerable amount of her company’s profit into charities and her local community, funding school numeracy programmes and generating high-paying jobs in a city that lacks alternative sources of wealth and skills.

She is known as a formidable entrepreneur who, in a male-dominated industry, can easily “hold a room of grown men”, according to one source. And yet those who have worked for her for decades say she is a considerate manager to her employees, and “genuinely cares about them and supports them”.

Her politics, too, might surprise some observers. Coates is not the type to pontificate on politics, according to one person who knows her. However, records show her father and companies within the Bet365 group have given a combined £480,000 to Labour over the years, starting with £50,000 in 2004, the year before Labour finalised the details of the Gambling Act. More recently, Peter Coates gave £25,000 to Starmer’s leadership campaign.

In the months leading up to the UK’s Brexit referendum in 2016, Bet365 gave £512,500 to the campaign for Britain to remain in the EU. Neither the Coates family nor the company has spoken publicly about this donation.

Bet365 has made friends in the Conservative party, too. In 2022, the then Stoke-on-Trent North MP, Jonathan Gullis, was forced to apologise to the chair of a Westminster Hall debate on gambling harms after admitting not only that he was reading directly from a Bet365 briefing paper in parliament, but also that he had failed to declare £540 worth of tickets he had received from the company that year to see Stoke City play Fulham in the Championship, a competition sponsored by another betting company, SkyBet.

Aaron Bell, formerly the Conservative MP for Newcastle-under-Lyme, had an even closer relationship with the company. He worked for Bet365 from 2006 until he won a parliamentary seat in 2019 – and called for caution over proposed reform of the gambling industry in parliament, until he stood down in 2024.

During the same Westminster Hall debate on gambling-related harm, Bell insisted that he was “not a spokesperson for the gambling industry” but went on to list Bet365’s virtues, including its record of going “above and beyond” on safer gambling measures, its roots in the Stoke community and Coates’ tax contribution.

The family’s tax bill is something of a source of pride – and potential political leverage. The company’s submission to a select committee inquiry in 2023 read: “Our founders are the second highest taxpayers in the UK.” Not everyone is impressed by this. As Scottish National party MP Ronnie Cowan put it in the Westminster Hall debate: “If I earned a billion pounds, I would make sure I paid my tax as well.”

While Coates and her family had dropped to third place on the most recent Sunday Times tax list, they are still estimated to have paid £376m to the exchequer last year. A sizeable chunk of that contribution comes from Coates’ enormous pay packets, which she puts through Bet365’s payroll, meaning she gets taxed at the 45% additional rate of income tax.

“That is very different from many of Britain’s billionaires,” says Luke Hildyard, director of the High Pay Centre. “That said, that level of wealth remains unsettling. It’s far beyond what any reasonable person might consider a fair or proportionate reward or incentive for business success.”

Liz Ritchie and her husband, Charles, set up the charity Gambling With Lives in 2018 after they lost their son Jack to suicide when he became addicted to gambling, first in bookies and later online. The charity seeks to help other people bereaved through gambling addiction and is a key campaigner pushing for reform to online gambling.

“Addiction underpins the industry’s business model,” says Ritchie. “The most addictive products, such as online slots, are aggressively marketed, and income from these has grown by 8.5% over the past year. Meanwhile, gambling suicides continue every day. How have we ended up in a situation where gambling companies thrive by putting the public in such danger?”

Despite being in recovery from gambling addiction, Sammy says he still gets “loads of text messages from gambling companies. I have to delete and report them. It feels like your phone is being tracked or monitored.”

Indeed, many gambling firms have fallen foul of the Gambling Commission regulator over their apparent failure to use the wealth of information they hold about people like Sammy to prevent harm. In 2022, SkyBet was fined £1.2m for sending promotional messages to gamblers who had signed up for a voluntary self-exclusion scheme to block themselves from betting sites.

Bet365 has felt the wrath of the regulator less often than many of its rivals, but it is not blameless. In April, it agreed to pay £582,120 for failures in its anti-money laundering and social responsibility checks – which included a failure to deploy its technological prowess to stage “meaningful” interactions with customers who might be suffering harm.

“You’re supposed to be a loyal customer,” says Sammy. But gambling firms “don’t give a toss about you. They just want you to keep playing.”

Coates has established a reputation as a very generous woman. The Denise Coates Foundation was set up in August 2012. According to the charity’s regulatory filings, she has put about £752m into it. Recipients of the foundation’s cash include Stoke’s Douglas Macmillan hospice (known locally as the Dougie Mac), numerous medical research and treatment projects, disaster relief funds and university bursaries for people from economically disadvantaged backgrounds.

There are artistic endeavours, too. The New Vic theatre in Newcastle-under-Lyme, just outside Stoke, is a regular beneficiary, while Coates also funded Tate Britain’s purchase of four watercolours by the women’s rights campaigner Sylvia Pankhurst, marking the centenary of women’s suffrage in 1918. London’s Courtauld Gallery features a space that bears Denise Coates’ name.

Charities addressing gambling-related harm are not listed among the beneficiaries of the foundation’s largesse, however, although Bet365 does fund such services through other means, including a voluntary industry levy.

Some recipients of the foundation’s charity are close to home. At least £700,000 has gone to the Hassall Green Nature Reserve in Cheshire. Keele University and the Sandbach Gymnastics Foundation both boast a Denise Coates Foundation Building, the name of their benefactor writ large on the external walls. Coates may abhor the spotlight but where her philanthropy is concerned, she is less shy about leaving her mark.

Coates’ foundation has donated several times to the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (Cafod), the official aid agency of the Catholic church. One person who has spent time with Coates says they have never seen her display any outward sign of religious sentiment, but her grandfather Leonard, a veteran of the first world war, was a Catholic. The Catholic Herald lists Peter and Denise Coates among the faith’s “leaders of the day”.

The Denise Coates Foundation has actually donated a relatively small proportion of its reserves – about £78m – since 2013, while amassing an endowment fund of £730m through cash injections from companies in the Bet365 group. In its accounts, the charity puts this down to a policy of ensuring that it earns enough through investments to make sure the charity is self-sustaining and not “dependent on donations from any one source”. That point of self-sufficiency might have been reached sooner, were it not for the fund losing £26.8m in the last financial year as a result of the poor performance of its investments.

The foundation’s strategy is unlikely to be called into question, though. Every one of its trustees is a member of the Coates family, or one of their employees.

The charity may come with more benefits to Coates than the warm glow of altruism. Her philanthropy may have helped save the Bet365 group £140m in tax, far more than the foundation has yet donated to good causes.

Where next for Coates? The Bet365 juggernaut certainly shows no signs of slowing down. From that portable cabin in a car park, Coates has pieced together an empire that stretches from Stanley Matthews Way in Stoke to Sydney, with offices in Frankfurt, Bogotá and Sofia. Now, she has her sights set on perhaps her biggest conquest yet: the US.

The growth of US sports betting has been meteoric since 2018, when the Supreme Court overturned a 1992 federal law that had essentially banned the practice. Predictably, Coates moved fast – Bet365 is now available in 10 states with a combined population of more than 85 million people. Some analysts have predicted that California, one of 12 states where sports betting remains illegal, would be a bigger market than the whole of the UK. The Coates territory has plenty of room to grow.

Bet365 refuses to disclose the geographical breakdown of its earnings, claiming it would be “prejudicial” to its interests. But as one person familiar with the company’s operations put it: “If you don’t have to declare the geographic breakdown of your business, why would you?”

In 2014, Bet365 appears to make significant income from China, categorised as a “grey” market in the gambling industry, because betting is a criminal offence there. Indeed, some Bet365 customers had been arrested after apparently placing bets on the Bet365 website, while bloggers who promoted the company were jailed.

The company faced no repercussions, perhaps because, as Bet365 pointed out at the time, it does not have any physical assets or staff in China. And, as a digital business with cross-border reach, it is able to stay well out of the range of any effort at enforcement action by Beijing, which has cracked down hard on domestic betting businesses.

Meanwhile, Bet365 continues to recruit Chinese speakers for its call centres in Stoke, according to job adverts posted online. It appears to look after them well, too. Land Registry records show that the company owns a vast property empire in Stoke, comprising more than 71 separate land titles, some of which are residential addresses where, according to locals, some of its imported personnel are housed. With China offering more than 1 billion potential customers, housing for a few call centre staff may be a small price to pay.

This approach – identifying a lucrative goal and then going hell for leather in pursuit of success – epitomises the ethos that has underpinned the Denise Coates story. “It’s what Bet365 do: they are like a patient, aggressive poker player,” says Bowden. “They think long and hard, and when they make their minds up that this is a good value bet, they go all in.”

Coates herself put it more succinctly in her 2012 interview: “We were the ultimate gamblers, if you like.”

UK: Study Examines the Impact of the Gambling Credit Card Ban

Several years ago, in April 2020, the United Kingdom became the first country to implement a complete ban on the use of credit cards for online and retail gambling. More than four years after the implementation of the ban, new research probed into the impact of the measure, how it affected gamblers and whether or not some consumers changed their behavior in light of the ban.

A report on the evaluation of the credit card ban in the UK was released Thursday by the National Center for Social Research. The evaluation of the credit card ban outlined strategic objectives, including determining the degree to which the ban was implemented, its impact on consumer behavior and other important factors that measured its effectiveness.

Focusing on the perception of the ban, the recently released report confirmed that it was “perceived to be a positive change by key stakeholders (people who gamble, affected others, support providers) overall.” Importantly, people who engaged in gambling activities admitted to understanding why the measure was needed.

Despite being perceived as an overall positive change, providers of support services acknowledged that “the ban was not comprehensive enough as it did not address other types of borrowed money.” While gambling operators considered that a risk-based approach would have been a better solution, charities and organizations providing support for people affected by at-risk gambling warned that problem gamblers may “turn to other sources of borrowed money which will make it difficult for affected others to monitor the spending of those who gamble.”

Notably, the evaluation uncovered that the increased friction did not always change the consumers’ gambling patterns. This means that after the ban, the people who admitted to gambling and borrowing money didn’t stop doing so.

When it comes to awareness of the ban on credit card gambling, the National Center For Social Research’s white paper explained that 57% of the people at moderate risk of gambling or ones at high risk of gambling were more likely to be aware of the restriction.

In contrast, only 29% of the people who experienced low levels of problem gambling were aware. A similar percentage of 23% of the surveyed individuals who admitted to having no gambling problems said they knew about the ban on credit cards for gambling. Approximately 11% of the non-gamblers said they were informed about the credit card gambling ban.

Per the recent evaluation, the consumers were notified about the ban on gambling with credit cards through different channels with the list including social media, pop-up messages and emails sent by gambling providers. Despite the wide variety of channels used to inform the population, some responders considered that more precise targeting could have been used.

Recently, a separate study conducted by the National Center for Social Research for GambleAware uncovered that marginalized communities use gambling as a method to cope with social exclusion. Although such communities included a diverse range of groups, gambling was found to be a common method to deal with many issues, including discrimination, mental health issues and loneliness, among others.

Ivan Toney bet on his own team to lose 13 times as FA reveal reasons behind ban

The Football Association have revealed that Ivan Toney was diagnosed as a gambling addict who bet on his own side to lose 13 times.

Toney has been banned from all football-related activities for eight months after pleading guilty to over 200 betting charges.

Following confirmation of his ban, the FA have published their written reasons behind the ban in which they noted that the one-time England international did not appear in any of the games he placed a bet against his own team, including 11 while playing for Newcastle United.

A statement from the governing body on Friday said: “There were 13 bets on Mr Toney’s own team to lose in 7 different matches between 22 August 2017 and 3 March 2018. 

“Mr Toney did not play in any of those matches where he placed bets against his loan club as he was not in the match squad or against his parent club as he was on loan.

“Of the 13 bets 11 were against Newcastle whilst Mr Toney was on loan at another club. The other 2 bets related to a game between Wigan v Aston Villa whilst the player was on loan at Wigan but he was not part of the squad.

“A further 15 of the 126 bets or instructions to bet were placed by Mr Toney to score in 9 different matches all of which he played in.”

The FA initially wanted the 27-year-old to be banned for 15 months but opted to reduce the suspension after Toney had pleaded guilty and was formally diagnosed with a gambling addiction.

They added: “The commission finds that a significant reduction should be made to reflect the diagnosed gambling addiction identified by [psychiatrist] Dr [Philip] Hopley. The lack of control the player has in respect of gambling is clearly a reflection of his diagnosed gambling addiction.”

Brentford have accepted the charges and offered their support to the striker. They said that they would “be doing everything possible to provide support to Ivan and his family to deal with the issues raised in this case” and “look forward to welcoming Ivan back to training in September.”

Paddy Power Betfair charged £490,000 for self-exclusion marketing

The licence holder of Paddy Power Betfair has been charged £490,000 by the UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) in the regulator’s second enforcement action of this week.

PPB Counterparty Services Limited, which trades as the Paddy Power and Betfair sports betting brands, was the subject of UKGC enforcement for sending promotional push notifications to devices linked with self-excluded customers.

Customers either directly self-excluded with PPB or via the GAMSTOP sector-wide exclusion scheme were sent offers for enhanced odds on a Premier League match on 21 November 2021.

Kay Roberts, UKGC Executive Director of Operations, said: “Although there is no evidence the marketing was intentional, nor that all the people with apps saw the notification or that self-excluded customers were allowed to gamble, we take such breaches seriously.

“We would advise all operators to learn from the operator’s failures and ensure their systems are robust enough to always prevent self-excluded customers from being sent promotional material.”

In its assessment, the Commission maintained that PPB’s actions reached regulatory rules requiring operators to take ‘all reasonable steps’ to prevent marketing material being sent to self-excluded customers.

Additionally, firms are required to take steps to remove the names and details of self-excluded customers from marketing databases within two days of receiving a completed self-exclusion notification.

The UKGC’s initial decision against Malta-based PPB was initially made on 9 May, but the company launched an appeal against the penalty. However, the operator and regulator later agreed to dispose of the appeal.

As well as accepting the £490,000 charge, PPB has also agreed to a third party audit of its marketing communication processes and procedures, at the FLutter Entertainment-held company’s own expense.

However, the UKGC has acknowledged that no complaints were received from customers regarding the aforementioned promotions. 

Additionally, the UKGC has noted that it was ‘proactively notified’ of the incident after it occured by the operator, which subsequently took ‘immediate remedial action’ and was compliant throughout the investigation.

In the aftermath of the White Paper publication, UKGC executives have made it clear that the regulator will continue to ensure that non-compliant operators face repercussions for licence breaches.

‘Stop promoting them’: victims call for football to end tragic link with gambling

Kimberly Wadsworth was 32 when she took her own life in 2018. The passionate Leeds fan who worked in marketing was a gambling addict. Having begun on the fixed-odds betting terminals found in any high-street bookmaker she had graduated to online casinos.

There she was plied with “free” bets and gained VIP status from the companies she gambled with. They incentivised her to keep playing even when her losses were heavy. Hers is a not unfamiliar story – Public Health England estimates there are 409 gambling-related suicides each year in England – but she is a reminder that gambling addiction is not an exclusively male affliction.

On Friday and Saturday, Kimberly’s mother, Kay, will join recovering gambling addicts and other families who have lost loved ones to gambling-related suicide in walking to five Yorkshire football grounds, starting with an early appointment at Sheffield Wednesday’s Hillsborough. From there the group of more than 30 will visit Sheffield United’s Bramall Lane, Rotherham’s New York Stadium and Barnsley’s Oakwell.

On Saturday, the group take the 19 miles from Barnsley to Leeds to complete 41 miles over two days. They have been allowed by club officials to take pictures inside Elland Road. “I am proud to walk in Kimberly’s memory with people who have suffered the harm and devastation that gambling addiction brings,” said Kay. “These harmful gambling products are designed to hook people in, regardless of their background, so we are calling on football to stop promoting them to millions of young fans.”

The event is the latest organised by the Big Step, a campaign to end gambling advertising and sponsorship in football, led by people harmed by gambling. Previous events include July’s 70-person walk from Manchester to Liverpool in memory of Ryan Myers, a 27-year-old Liverpool-supporting carpenter. In February, a three-day hike took in Scottish stadiums on the route from Edinburgh to Glasgow in remembrance of Lewis Keogh, a 34-year-old Sheffield Wednesday fan.

This weekend’s walk’s aim is highlighting, in the words of James Grimes, the organiser and Big Step founder, that “this is not just a male issue. Although football was a part of Kimberly’s addiction so were other parts of gambling that you wouldn’t necessarily associate with a young, male football fan.”

Football club shirts, websites, social media, pitchside banners and in particular TV advertising continue to be awash with gambling, despite lobbying that aims to protect young eyes from being enticed. Grimes is a recovering addict whose 12-year journey from football betting as a 16-year-old Tottenham fan took in about 50 gambling companies across myriad betting products including online casinos to the point of being “basically suicidal” after a heavy losing run on a fixed-odds betting terminal.

“Spurs had a casino on the front of their shirts at that time: Mansion. That was a company I went on to use and it quickly consumed all of my life. Football was a constant in it. Whenever I saw new companies pop up on shirts or the side of the pitch, I would use those sites. It sucked everything away from me. I turned from a happy, normal boy into a hopeless, helpless wreck of a man.

“The thing I try to emphasise is that it was only gambling that did that. I had a great upbringing, there was no trauma, I never had an addiction to anything else.”

Grimes believes he fell victim to the liberalised 2005 Gambling Act that opened up the flood of betting advertising. From there, the 18-25 market, especially vulnerable, was exposed to a cornucopia of gambling products in which football bets became a gateway drug towards becoming the VIP clients companies take heavy profit from.

Could things be changing? Of the five Yorkshire clubs visited by the Big Step this weekend, only one, Leeds, has a betting shirt sponsor, the Manx-based SBOTOP. Barnsley began the season with a rapidly curtailed cryptocurrency deal, a reminder of clubs’ eternal attraction to easy money. When the Big Step campaign began in 2019, 28 of 44 Premier League and Championship clubs had betting shirt sponsors, a number now reduced to 14.

Despite heavy lobbying and growing resistance among fans, betting advertising pervades on TV, radio and the web. A government white paper on gambling reform was postponed for a fourth time in July. The presence in government of the anti-gambling advocate Chris Philp, chief secretary to the Treasury, and the influence of Iain Duncan Smith, similarly minded, in Liz Truss’s leadership campaign are yet to be brought to bear. For now, football clubs continue to act as advertising boards for an industry held responsible for the loss of Kimberly and many others.

Premier League: Gambling sponsor shirt ban included in draft government white paper

Premier League clubs could face a ban on having gambling sponsors on their shirts after the proposal was included in a draft white paper, sources have told BBC Sport.

Half of the Premier League's 20 teams have betting firms on their shirts, with the government set to update gambling laws next month.

Campaigners have welcomed the idea, but believe a ban would be "incoherent" if not also applicable to teams in the English Football League and for other adverts.

The move would follow a recommendation by a House of Lords select committee in 2020, which said Premier League clubs should face a shirt sponsorship ban, but Championship clubs should be given time to phase out their partnerships.

A Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) spokesperson told BBC Sport: "We are undertaking the most comprehensive review of gambling laws in 15 years to make sure they are fit for the digital age.

"We will publish a white paper which sets out our vision for the sector in the coming weeks."

Delays to the government white paper being published mean clubs might already be negotiating contracts for next season onwards.

That could mean any ban is likely to be applied for the 2023-24 season at the earliest, but there have also been discussions about whether Premier League clubs could offer to remove gambling sponsorship from shirts voluntarily.

The Premier League has previously said that "a self-regulatory approach would provide a practical and flexible alternative to legislation or outright prohibition."

The EFL, which is sponsored by Sky Bet, says a gambling sponsorship ban would cost clubs £40m a year.

James Grimes of campaign group, The Big Step, told BBC Sport: "This is welcome, but to remove gambling from shirts while allowing pitch-side advertising, league sponsorship and club partnerships to continue would be massively incoherent.

"Every young fan should be able to watch their club - in the ground and on TV - without being bombarded by ads for gambling, which we know harms millions, and takes hundreds of lives every year.

"If the government recognises gambling can be harmful, as this step suggests, then it must end all gambling advertising and sponsorship in football at all levels, not just on shirts."

A recent YouGov survey said 1.4m people in Britain are being harmed by gambling with a further 1.5m at risk.

But the Premier League and EFL believe there is no evidence to show a causal link between gambling sponsorship and problem gambling.

The Betting and Gaming Council spokesperson says that all sponsorships "must comply with strict guidelines and safer gambling messaging is regularly and prominently displayed".

It has also said it "strongly supports the gambling review as a further opportunity to raise standards".

BetVictor agrees £2m regulatory settlement over GB licence breaches

Following a compliance assessment in March 2020, the Commission launched a regulatory review of BV Gaming, which uncovered breaches of the licence conditions and codes of practice (LCCP) of its Combined Remote Operating Licence.

The investigation and regulatory review, which covered the period from 1 January 2019 to 12 March 2020, found failings related to the implementation of anti-money laundering (AML) policies, procedures and controls.

In addition, the GC said there were deficiencies in BV Gaming’s responsible gambling policies, procedures, controls and practices, including weaknesses in implementation, as well as breaches of fairness rules.

BV Gaming operates the betvictor.com, betvictor.mobi, hbingo.co.uk, heartbingo.co.uk and parimatch.co.uk brands in Britain.

“As a gambling regulator our focus is on ensuring that gambling in Britain is fair, safe and crime-free, and BetVictor failed consumers by breaching rules aimed at achieving these objectives,” the Commission’s director of enforcement Leanne Oxley said.

“Non-compliance – no matter what the reason – will never be a viable business option for gambling businesses. We will always be tough on operators who fail in this way.”

Specific breaches included licence condition 7.1.1(1), which states all licensees must ensure terms are fair as per the Consumer Rights Act 2015. 

The Commission said this was an isolated failing and not systemic, but BV Gaming accepted that, at the time, it was not in full compliance with the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) principles in regard to its terms and conditions for promotions.

In addition, the Committee ruled that it was not clear in its terms and conditions whether the operator would try to repay any deposit balance to the last payment method used by a customer when an account is inactive for 12 months, as required by the Act.

A further breach was identified in relation to licence condition 12.1.1(1), which says licensees must assess of the risks of their business being used for money laundering and terrorist financing, and update this when needed.

BV Gaming admitted its AML risk assessment did not “sufficiently” meet the Commission’s expectations or fully comply with its AML risk assessment.

The assessment also flagged licence condition 12.1.1 (2), which says that after completing the risk assessment, licensees must ensure they have appropriate policies, procedures and controls to prevent money laundering and terrorist financing.

Again, BV Gaming accepted at the time, its policies and processes were not fully compliant, and it was in breach of the condition.

The Commission said it did not find evidence of effective due diligence in the majority of the customer accounts reviewed. In addition, certain customers were able to deposit and spend large sums of money before source of funds and affordability were established. 

Customers were also able to continue gambling after hitting the initial trigger as they would not hit further triggers for significant periods.

Another breach related to licence condition 12.1.1(3), which says these policies, procedures and controls must be implemented effectively, kept under review and revised appropriately. BV Gaming admitted its processes were not fully compliant and it needed a more coordinated approach.

Here, the Commission again said there was no evidence of effective due diligence in the majority of the customer accounts reviewed, nor were there controls to ensure restrictions were placed on accounts when requested.

The regulator also noted an “overreliance” on automated thresholds for source-of-funds checks.

The Commission said there was some evidence of regular meetings with customers, particularly looking at the top 25 high-risk customers, but there was no evidence of ongoing monitoring unless they hit the thresholds.

Meanwhile, the regulator also identified a breach of paragraph 1 of licence condition 12.1.2, which requires licensees based abroad to comply with the Money Laundering Regulations 2007.

Furthermore, the Commission noted paragraphs one and two of social responsibility code provision (SRCP) 3.4.1 (Customer Interaction). This licence condition requires operators to have in place policies and procedures for customer interaction where they have concerns about a player’s behaviour.

These policies must include a specific provision for making use of all relevant information to guide and deliver effective customer interaction.

BV Gaming agreed it was not fully in compliance as it failed to implement and follow its policies to ensure ‘at risk’ customers were protected from harm, nor did it make use of all relevant sources of information to ensure effective decision making.

Finally, the Commission identified a breach of SRCP 5.1.9(2), which requires licensees to ensure conditions that apply to marketing incentives are provided “transparently and prominently”.

BV Gaming accepted that significant conditions of a welcome offer were not displayed with sufficient prominence at the point of promotion, despite there being sufficient space to do so.

Analysing its findings, the Commission took into account the serious nature of the breaches, impact on the licensing objectives and the fact that similar cases have been identified with other operators, and so BV Gaming’s management should have been aware of such issues.

The regulator did, however, note a number of mitigating factors including BV Gaming’s early recognition of failings and that it was co-operative throughout the review. The Commission also recognised the steps BV Gaming took to address the issues, including putting in place a remedial action plan within two days of receiving the notice commencing the licence review.

The Commission and BV Gaming reached a regulatory settlement worth £2.0m, including a £1.7m payment in lieu of a financial penalty, £352,000 divestment of gross gaming yield gained as a result of the failings, and £11,000 towards the costs of investigation.

The Asian Connection

A new name appeared on the LED boards which run across all four stands of Goodison Park on the occasion of the last Merseyside derby: i8.BET.

A few hours earlier, on the very same day, Wednesday 1 December, Everton FC announced on its website that it had “further expanded its international partnership portfolio by signing up i8.BET as a new commercial partner”.

The statement read: “The deal will see i8.BET become the Club’s exclusive Official Betting Partner in Asia, as the gaming brand continues to expand its trusted and innovative platform in the online betting market across Asia and beyond”.

The news was barely shared outside of the specialist betting media, which satisfied themselves with publishing quotes from the original statement without adding detail or comment. No British newspaper or website of note thought it worthy of a mention.

This was understandable. This type of partnership is commonplace in the Premier League, where drawing money from opaque e-Gambling operators has long been accepted as a fait accompli, regardless of the inconvenient questions which could be raised about the problematic nature of these businesses. English football chose to look the other way, as legislators have done until now. When Josimar contacted eleven Premier League clubs about their existing, lucrative relationships with various online foreign bookmakers, only two, Wolves and Manchester United, replied to our enquiries, both of them telling us in substance: “no comment”.

That some of these operators, whose beneficial owners are unknown to all, the clubs they do deals with included, are probably complicit in money-laundering, labour-trafficking and other criminal activities is not speculation, but taken as fact by national and international law enforcement agencies (see Josimar’s 18-month long investigation into the matter, The trillion-dollar gambling game). Yet, despite recent talk of reforming the UK gambling laws, the links between elite English football and mysterious e-Gambling platforms is as strong as it’s ever been, and fresh deals are still being brokered, as was shown by Everton’s acquisition of a new ‘Official Asian Betting Partner’ (*).

Everton FC could be expected to be extra careful when choosing new betting partners.  SportPesa, a Kenyan bookmaker founded by exiled Bulgarian casino owner Guerassim Nikolov, had become their main sponsor in June 2017. The five-year deal, the biggest in the club’s history, worth an estimated 62.5 million US dollars, was supposed to run until June 2022, but the club had to cut its partnership short in February 2020. An investigation by The Guardian’s David Conn revealed that the company did not pay tax on the huge profits it made in the African country and beyond, and had its activities suspended by the Kenyan government in 2019. Nikolov was also suspected of credit card fraud on a massive scale, racketeering, and even, in a surreal twist, the hijacking of 14 trucks in Serbia. Interestingly, SportPesa had acquired its UK gambling licence through the services of TGP Europe Ltd, a company based in the Isle of Man which specialises in providing so-called ‘white label’ licences to foreign operators. It is a name we’ll come across again.

«Promotions in key brand territories»

So, what of i8.BET, the ‘trusted and innovative platform’ which is referred to in Everton’s statement?

A certain ‘Darren Wang’, Chief Marketing Officer of the club’s new Asian partner, is quoted in the same statement as saying: “In line with our global tagline of ‘Choose The Best’, we are excited to exclusively partner with such an iconic Premier League team as Everton Football Club; a partnership that will see us working with the club on a number of exciting and innovative initiatives and promotions in key brand territories in support of our ongoing brand expansion and trust building efforts.”

Josimar set out to find out what exactly this ‘ongoing brand expansion’ consisted of. The truth is that i8.BET has a long way to go before establishing its presence and ‘building trust’ on markets where – it bears repeating – gambling on sports is illegal. Why? Because, strictly speaking, i8.BET is not a bookmaker.

As is commonplace with other Asian e-Gambling platforms which have acquired ‘white label’ licences in Great Britain, visiting i8.BET’s UK website leads to a dead-end. It is not operational.

A question of time? Perhaps. But it should be remembered that, for Asian operators, the one real purpose of acquiring a UK licence is to use their virtual presence in Britain as a springboard for the genuine markets where they will make their money. Linking up with prestigious partners such as Everton FC and, by extension, the world’s most popular football league, the Premier League, is the most efficient way to promote the gambling brands at “home” – in China, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia – where advertising sportsbooks is just as illegal as placing bets on what they offer.

The story is quite different when avoiding geo-restriction and accessing i8.BET from Indonesia, Thailand, China and Malaysia, as Josimar has done.

These are just a few examples of the imagery used by all of i8.BET’s Asian websites, complete with the usual ‘suggestive’, borderline pornographic pictures of very young women, plus a photograph of male supermodel David Gandy lifted from an advertisement for Johnny Walker whisky for good measure. One thing is sure: i8.BET is not holding back on using Everton FC’s name and crest, or likenesses of its players.

The real problem, however, does not lie with these images, repulsive as they may be for many.

Josimar could find no mention whatsoever of i8.BET, its tagline ‘Choose the best’ or of its ‘Chief Marketing Officer’ Darren Wang anywhere on the web prior to the announcement of the bookmaker’s deal with Everton on 1 December, even when using search engines from countries where the brand is supposed to be present. It was as if i8.BET had been created ex nihilo.

The domain name itself is the property of a Chinese national named Lin Yunfei, domiciled in Zhengzhou, who has registered hundreds of other names, but about whom no other details can be found. As to the brand itself, which claims to hold a Filipino licence on its Malaysian website, no company of that name can be found on the official Filipino registry of licensed gambling operators, which suggests that either i8.BET is the avatar of another company, or was only registered very recently, if one sets aside the possibility that it does not even exist.

Josimar tried to register as a client and place an actual bet on the Malaysian, Thai and Chinese versions of the i8.BET website. What happened then was highly unusual – and suspect: we were not taken to a dedicated, unique sportsbook as expected, but redirected to other e-Gambling websites, namely those of M8BET, MAXBET, NOVA88 and SBOBET.

Due diligence?

In other words, it was impossible to place a bet on i8.BET itself, which appears to be nothing but an agent for other bookmakers; yet, to place that bet with SBOBET or any of the other promoted brands, the customer first had to register with i8.BET, which raised the question: could this be a way to harvest personal data from customers? Does i8.BET actually exist? Is there even really someone called ‘Darren Wang’? And is Everton FC aware of all this?

What is more, none of the bookmakers which i8.BET is a portal to is licensed in the UK. This means that the UK Gambling Commission, by granting the i8.BET brand a licence, has enabled unregulated operators to benefit, at least indirectly, from its stamp of approval.

Josimar approached Everton FC with a list of detailed questions, and asked the club to provide contact details for their new partners, since, apart from a ‘chat’ function for customers, none of these details appear anywhere on any of the various Asian versions of the i8.BET website. No response was forthcoming.

Josimar also contacted the UK Gambling Commission, which replied: “We do not talk about individual operators or cases”, referred us to its online registry of licensed companies, and told us, that “Where an operator contracts with a third party, we expect the operators that we licence to carry out all necessary due diligence to satisfy themselves that the proposed relationship will not in any way compromise the operator’s own compliance.”

The operator in question is TGP Europe Ltd – the very same Isle of Man company which acquired a UK licence for Everton FC’s previous – and disgraced – betting partner SportPesa, and has done the same for a number of e-Gambling sponsors of English football clubs, including FUN88 (Newcastle), SBOTOP (Leeds United, which has direct links with SBOBET, one of the websites i8.BET redirects to), Yabo (formerly associated with Manchester United) and a number of others.

Josimar contacted TGP Europe Ltd and put a number of questions to the Douglas-based company, namely:

Would you be able to provide Josimar with a point of contact with i8.bet and, in particular, Mr Darren Wang, its Chief Marketing Officer, who is quoted in Everton FC’s press release?

When do you expect i8.bet to start operating in the UK?

is i8.bet a genuine e-Gambling platform, or does it act as an agent for other Asian bookmakers?

As regards TGP Europe Ltd and its parent company TGP Holdings Ltd, is it correct, as has been mentioned in numerous media reports, that it was originally founded and is ultimately owned by the Macau-based group SunCity?

The last of these questions was of particular interest, as the billionaire owner of the SunCity group, Alvin Chau (pictured below), was arrested along with ten other individuals by Chinese authorities in late November, under suspicion of being part of a criminal gang and of “establishing gambling platforms overseas and soliciting residents in mainland China to engage in illicit gambling activities online”, to quote Chong Kam Leong, a spokesman for Macau’s Judiciary Police (*). According to media reports, the individuals who were arrested admitted “establishing overseas gambling platforms and conducting illegal virtual betting activities” in China.

TGP Europe did not respond to our questions.

And on this Monday night, as Everton welcomes Arsenal in its grand old stadium for the 15th round of the Premier League campaign, the name and the promotional messages of i8.BET will be shown to hundreds of millions of spectators across the globe. Who they are, what they actually do, who might be hiding behind them, no-one knows, aside from a handful of individuals who are neither seen nor heard, nor scrutinised. What kind of due diligence process, if any, was conducted before TGP, the UK Gambling Commission and Everton welcomed the newcomer is anyone’s guess.

In 21st century football, it’s business as unusual.

(*) Everton FC already had two ‘official betting partners’: Cyprus-based Parimatch, also a partner of Juventus and Leicester City, which signed a two-year deal with the club in September 2020, and operates primarily in Eastern Europe; and Rushbet.co, a partner since December 2020, which is active in Colombia.

(*) SunCity shares plunged by 10% when the arrests were announced.

Almost £225,000 in wages and freebies taken from gambling industry by 28 MPs

On 7 July, the Conservative MP for Blackpool South, Scott Benton, took his seat at Wembley to watch England take on Denmark in the semi-final of Euro 2020, courtesy of the Ladbrokes Coral owner, Entain – a freebie worth £3,457.

Less than four hours earlier, Benton had warned parliament that a review of betting laws, widely expected to result in tougher regulation, must not be driven by anti-gambling “ideology”.

He called for casinos to be allowed more slot machines, adding that many people would be “concerned” about the Gambling Commission’s plans for affordability checks on people betting online and in person, a measure intended to prevent ruinous losses.

Days earlier he had enjoyed another day out, at Ascot, courtesy of the Betting & Gaming Council (BGC) trade body. In total, he accepted hospitality worth £7,495 during a gambling-funded summer of sport.

All in all 28s MPs – 19 Conservative and the rest Labour – have taken almost £225,000 in wages and freebies from the gambling industry since August 2020.

During the same debate at which Benton spoke – one of his two speeches favourable to the gambling industry that month – Labour’s John Spellar interceded. He referred to the urgent need to “improve and continue Britain’s attractiveness” as a casino destination.

He had recently been a guest of the Paddy Power owner, Flutter, at England’s match against Germany, and was due to attend the cricket at Lord’s the following month, at a cost of £874.80 to the BGC, whose members include major casino companies.

For the gambling industry, it was a busy month for both hospitality and political fulmination about the future of regulation.

On 13 July, the Conservative MP Mark Jenkinson expressed “grave concerns” about the prospect of the government imposing betting limits, in an article, sponsored by the BGC, for the Conservative Home website. The article appeared six days after he watched England play Denmark, courtesy of Entain, and less than a month after the BGC took him to Ascot, visits worth a combined £4,857.

There is no suggestion that any of the trio broke parliamentary rules. But their actions have raised concerns about the gambling industry’s apparent attempts to curry favour with politicians and the system that allows it.

The gambling sector’s charm offensive comes in the run-up to the publication of a white paper on gambling reform, expected early next year, that could significantly curb the profitability of bookmakers and online casinos.

One peer described the industry’s charm offensive as a “pretty obvious” attempt to influence the outcome of the reforms.

By far the biggest beneficiary of the gambling industry’s largesse over the past year was Philip Davies, the Conservative MP for Shipley. The Guardian revealed last year that he had accepted almost £50,000 to advise the Ladbrokes owner, Entain, on safer gambling and customer service.

Davies has previously said that his work outside parliament is “a matter for me”, although in 2010 he did not extend the same forbearance towards firefighters with second jobs, who were resisting changes to their shift pattern. The firefighters, he said, “ought to start to live in the real world at a time when many people are grateful to hang on to their one job”.

On top of his work for Entain, which employed two of his former political aides in senior roles at the time he took the job, Davies accepted hospitality worth a combined £8,695 from the company, fellow betting firms Flutter and Gamesys, and the Betting & Gaming Council.

In addition to what it paid Davies, Entain spent almost £41,000 on hospitality for 13 MPs over the summer.

The BGC spent half that sum, £20,405, escorting lawmakers to events including three England matches at Euro 2020, horse racing at Ascot, cricket at Lord’s and the Ivor Novello awards.

Of the 13 MPs who enjoyed the trade body’s hospitality, three spoke out in support of the industry within days of being entertained, two of them – Benton and Spellar – in the House of Commons.

During that same debate, Laurence Robertson – a longtime advocate for the gambling industry – warned of the “great danger” of tighter regulation, backing the BGC’s view that it would drive people towards the black market.

As he has pointed out, he correctly declared his interest, a £24,000-a-year role with the BGC, advising on sport and safer gambling. He also took £9,307 worth of tickets and hospitality at Ascot, York and Sandown racecourses, Lord’s and England’s match against Denmark. The gifts came from the BGC, SkyBet, Entain and Coral.

In total, 28 MPs are either paid by the gambling industry or have accepted hospitality from the industry, with a total value of £224,281 since August 2020. All of the hospitality and salaries were declared to the register of members’ interests, in line with parliamentary rules.

Beneficiaries include the Conservative MPs Caroline Dinenage, who is a minister within the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, which is overseeing the gambling review, and Aaron Bell, who used to work for Bet365.

The BGC is led by Michael Dugher, a former Labour MP.

Lord Foster of Bath, the chair of Peers for Gambling Reform, said it was “pretty obvious why the industry is giving largesse to parliamentarians”, calling the flurry of consultancy roles and hospitality freebies an attempt to “try and influence the outcome to the advantage of gambling companies. With millions of people impacted by problem gambling and more than one gambling-related suicide every day, I suspect [they] will find themselves on the wrong side of public opinion.”

Matt Zarb-Cousin, a former aide to Jeremy Corbyn and director Clean Up Gambling, said: “Far too many MPs have had their snouts in the gambling trough. This is a sector that derives most of its profits from the harm it causes their constituents. The government has an opportunity in its gambling review to demonstrate our democracy is not for sale.”

An Entain spokesperson said: “Any political engagement we conduct is always in line with the registers of members’ interest. As a sports betting and interactive entertainment company, we are proud of the role we play in supporting grassroots and elite sports both in the UK and internationally.”

A BGC spokesperson said: “Any hospitality is consistent with the parliamentary rules and is fully declared and transparent.”

Aaron Bell said: “I have declared all hospitality promptly and transparently in the register of member’s interests, and have always abided by the parliamentary code of conduct.”

UK gambling laws review to consider ban on sports sponsorship

A wide-ranging review of gambling laws to be launched next week will consider banning sports sponsorship and limiting online casino stakes among a “reformer’s shopping list” of proposals to overhaul gambling laws, the Guardian can reveal.

The long-awaited review, which could roll back vast swathes of the 2005 Gambling Act 2005, will begin as soon as Monday with an initial call for evidence.

Terms of reference will be published at the same time, offering the first insight into what is in store for the gambling industry as well as campaigners calling for tougher regulation.

Amid mounting concern about gambling’s role in wider society, changes under consideration will include:

• Limits on online stakes.

• Tough affordability checks.

• A testing regime for new products.

• A sports sponsorship ban.

• New powers to tackle the parallel market.

The broad scope is likely to welcomed by advocates for tighter regulation, including people recovering from problem gambling and more than 50 MPs and and peers who have backed stricter controls. But the prospect of a much harsher regulatory climate will be of concern to online casino bosses and bookmakers.

Multiple sources said officials at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), which is leading the process, would take aim at almost every area of gambling law, in what one insider termed a “reformer’s shopping list”.

One key area in their sights is regulation of online casino and electronic slot machine games. Gamblers can bet unlimited amounts online, even though some internet-based games such as roulette are no different from those that were available on fixed-odds betting terminals, whose maximum stake was cut for £100 to £2.

Alongside maximum stakes, ministers will consider whether firms should be forced to limit players’ monthly losses and carry out much stricter affordability checks to ensure people are gambling within their means.

It follows a string of high-profile incidents in which problem gamblers were left destitute after losing large sums of money. In one case, an online betting firm accepted a “VIP” gambler’s redundancy payout as proof he could afford to keep betting. In another, high street bookmakers were accused of knowingly allowing a problem user to gamble away compensation for an injury that had left him severely disabled.

Under proposals to be weighed up by the DMCS, new gambling products could also be subjected to a rigorous testing regime that would determine whether they are released on to the market and how much can be wagered on them.

The UK gambling industry’s lobby group, the Betting & Gaming Council, has repeatedly said tightening the regulations too far could fuel parallel market betting operations that have a scant regard for customer safety. But the DCMS will consider giving the regulator, the Gambling Commission, which has admitted it is underfunded, extra financial resources and new powers to tackle illicit operators.

Sources said the review would also consider marketing and advertising, including the possibility of new measures to curb sports sponsorship – including logos on football club shirts – in an apparent response to the “gamblification” of football.

Promotional offers are also expected to form part of the review’s scope, indicating that the government is not satisfied with a joint effort by the industry and the Gambling Commission to address concerns about VIP schemes, bonuses and so-called “free bets”.

VIP schemes, in which gamblers who lose large amounts of money are wined, dined and given financial incentives to keep betting, have been a common feature of high-profile stories about problem gamblers who resorted to crime or took their own lives.

The DCMS is not expected to take on the much-criticised lack of funding for treatment of gambling addiction, indicating that it will be left to the Department of Health and Social Care to address concerns about the availability of help for people with a gambling disorder.

The review is likely to be overseen by the sports minister, Nigel Huddleston, but Boris Johnson is understood to be keen on dialling back the Blair-era legislation that gave rise to the modern UK gambling industry.

Senior officials in Downing Street are also believed to see gambling reform as a vote-winner, as well as the right thing to do. “The PM just sees it as people being exploited and it’s not him,” one MP with knowledge of No 10’s thinking said earlier this year.

Betsson Announces UK Brand Closures

Betsson is reducing its business presence in the UK further by reducing its licenses to only one after handing back three to the UK Gambling Commission.

The operator has been pulling back from the UK market since 2018 when it closed its offices and now with the remaining license will operate under the Rizk brand exclusively.

With just 3% of Betsson’s business coming from the UK market and with the company saying that with the cost of investments in technology, regulatory compliance and marketing it was prudent that review and downsize its operations in the UK.

B2C Brands such as Guts, Kaboo, Betsafe, Betsson, Casino Euro, Live Roulette, Racebets and Jackpot247 will all be removed from the UK markets.

Sports Personalities To Be Banned Under New Rules For Gambling Ads

The use of sports personalities and other celebrities in gambling related advertising could be banned under new rules that are being considered by the Committees of Advertising Practice (CAP), the regulator for setting the code of practices for advertising in the UK.

At present gambling adverts are only be banned if the CAP thought that it was appealing to under 18-year olds, however the CAP is now considering banning adverts that it feels uses adults in the celebrity bracket to attract children to gambling.

Current adverts that feature Tottenham football boss Jose Mourinho, Harry Redknapp and former England striker Michael Owen would all be banned under the new rules.

However a well known actor such as Ray Winstone who is not known to children would be allowed to continue advertising for Bet365.

The possible new rule changes on advertising follows the recent GambleAware research that found that the current content of gambling advertising has the potential to attract under 18s to gambling because of the use of such known celebrities.

Currently the proposals are under public consultation and if they were to be enforced would happen early in 2021.

888 confirms Lord Mendelsohn as inbound chairman for critical 2021 review

888 Holdings has filed a notice with the London Stock Exchange, confirming that Lord Jonathan Mendelsohn will replace Brian Mattingley as its designate company chairman.

The appointment of Lord Mendelsohn as new chairman is scheduled to take place at 888’s next annual general meeting in May 2021, with Mattingley officially resigning from all governance duties. 

In its notice, 888 highlighted Lord Mendelsohn’s extensive experience within the gambling sector, having co-founded strategic M&A advisory Oakvale Capital which focuses on igaming, entertainment and media investments.  

A high-profile appointment, Lord Mendelsohn is best recognised as a key adviser to Tony Blair, helping the former PM to execute his 1997 election-winning New Labour campaign strategy.  

 Lord Mendelsohn’s appointment has garnered media wide attention, closely following last week’s announcement by Flutter Entertainment that former Labour deputy leader Tom Watson had joined the company as a regulatory advisor.

UK gambling faces a critical end of year, as the government ramps up preparations to review the 2005 Gambling Act, focusing on improving industry safeguards and consumer standards.

Lord Mendelsohn, commente:: “I am very excited to join the Board of such a world-class gaming operator. 888 is a company that I have long admired during my more than 20 years working with companies in the gaming and gambling industries.

“The Group has a number of very exciting opportunities and I am looking forward to working closely with the Board and the management team to continue to deliver the Group’s growth strategy and generate further stakeholder value. 

This morning’s LSE filing sees Brian Mattingley confirm that he will end his 15-year tenure as a 888 director, having re-established the online gambling group as a FTSE blue-chip enterprise.

UK gambling regulator probing M88, Mansion Europe ‘model and operations’

Online gambling operator Mansion’s predominantly Asian-facing M88 brand is reportedly under investigation by UK gambling regulators, resulting in the brand losing its English Premier League sponsorship. 

On Friday, EPL club AFC Bournemouth announced that it wouldn’t be renewing its shirt sponsorship deal with M88 aka Mansion88 when it expired Sunday. The club thanked M88 for its support over the past three years but said it would finish the remainder of the EPL’s current season – which resumes play on June 17 – using a different kit. The sleeve sponsorship with parent company Mansion is reportedly unaffected. 

On Saturday, The Athletic reported that Bournemouth’s decision came after being informed that the UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) was “currently looking at various aspects of M88 and Mansion Europe model and operations.” 

It’s unclear specifically what aspects of that model are under the UKGC microscope but in April, UK media reported that the UKGC was looking at the VIP scheme of Mansion’s MansionBet brand. The report quoted a Mansion rep telling a customer that the site didn’t like requiring customers to reveal the source of their gambling funds “but we have to do it because the UK gambling regulators make us do it.” 

The Mansion Group is no stranger to being on the receiving end of gambling regulators’ disciplinary tools, having been fined €150k by the Netherlands Gambling Authority several years ago for accepting Dutch customers without Dutch permission. 

M88 recently announced that it was withdrawing its services from Cambodia and Malaysia. The company didn’t specify the reasons behind the exits, although those two markets are believed to be small potatoes compared to the brand’s business in China, Thailand and Vietnam. 

The Daily Mail reported that if Bournemouth couldn’t come to terms with a new commercial sponsor, the club could end up featuring a ‘thank you’ message to COVID-19 frontline medical workers on its kit for the nine games remaining in the current EPL season.

Tory MPs took £2,400 of Cheltenham Festival freebies days before coronavirus lockdown

Two Tory MPs accepted £2,400 worth of tickets to the Cheltenham Festival just days before the UK went into coronavirus lockdown.

It's feared the gathering of more than 250,000 people helped spread the virus widely across the country.

Shipley MP Philip Davies and former minister Caroline Nokes accepted eight tickets between them to the horse racing event from GVC Holdings, the sports betting giant which owns Ladbrokes and Coral.

Mr Davies accepted six tickets, worth £300 each, but refused to say whether he had used them.

He said: "I have absolutely nothing to say to the Daily Mirror."

Ms Nokes accepted two tickets, also worth £300 each.

She was photographed at the event, wearing a grey suit with pink checks and a shocking pink hat and matching scarf.

Both MPs registered the gifts with Commons authorities - stating they would have access to a VIP hospitality box during their visit.

Ms Nokes said: “I accepted the tickets and declared them in accordance with the rules, which clearly you can establish from the register of members’ interests.

“As you know it was prior to the lockdown being declared and there were no restrictions on movement.”

Ms Nokes added a number of other MPs also attended the races on the same day, including Shadow Security Minister Conor McGinn.

Mr McGinn confirmed he attended the event in his capacity as chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Racing.

He said: "I get an annual metal badge from the Racecourse Association which allows me admittance to race meetings across Britain over the course of the year, including Cheltenham, which is owned by the Jockey Club."

Mr McGinn registers the badge as a benefit with Commons authorities at the start of each year.

He added: "I’m heavily involved in horse racing, not least because Haydock Park Is in my constituency. It is currently being used as a COVID-19 testing site for NHS staff in the North West."

Professor Sir David King said yesterday (WED) that the government had waited too late to ban large gatherings like Cheltenham, and that delay had cost lives.

He told LBC Radio: “Imagine, 16th March (sic), having a horse race go on with a massive crowd at Cheltenham.

“We didn’t manage this until too late and every day’s delay has resulted in further deaths in the United Kingdom.”

The Cheltenham Festival ran from Tuesday, March 10 to Friday, March 13.

At the time, Boris Johnson was still holding out on banning large gatherings, despite Scotland issuing such an order on March 12.

The Government eventually banned gatherings of more than 500 people the following weekend.

The Organisers of the horse racing festival defended their decision to go ahead when concerns were raised that attendees had reported symptoms after the event.

Comedian Lee Mack tested positive for Covid-19 after spending two days at the festival - with a friend reportedly saying he believed he caught it from a driver on his way to the event.

And the Times reported Andrew Parker Bowles, the former husband of the Duchess of Cornwall said he believes he “probably got it on the Wednesday or Friday I attended Cheltenham”.

A spokesperson said: “The Festival concluded three weeks ago and went ahead under the clear and ongoing guidance from the government and its science experts throughout, like other popular sports events at Twickenham [and] Murrayfield, 10 Premier League matches and the Uefa Champions League [between Liverpool and Atlético Madrid] at Anfield that same week.

“We promoted the latest public health advice and introduced a range of additional hygiene measures at the event, including hundreds of hand sanitiser dispensers and extra wash basins.”