Tag Archives: gambling companies

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Authentic Gaming, a leading provider of live casino services, has been granted entry into the United Kingdom online gaming market. This licensure allows the company to roll out its full suite of gaming and associated products. This is a first for the company and the United Kingdom society at large.

This company is a famed world over for supplying a diverse portfolio of cutting-edge and highly-engaging live roulette games. It also accommodates a number of streaming sources. This is not to mention that it has a huge consumer base that comprises tables that are located on the floors of various casino resorts world over.

While hailing this move, Jonas Delin, the Chief Executive Officer of Authentic Gaming, had these to say: “The United Kingdom is a leading market for us. It is crucial to our expansion as we launch our invasions into the heavily-regulated jurisdiction world over. With almost half of our client base possessing a license of the United Kingdom Gambling Commission, we are more than eager to bring in our complete suite of gaming collections to the United Kingdom market.

These clients understand that this move will bring on board a huge hit.“We are also devoted to elevating the live casino experience to greater heights. We also hope to make it as thrilling as possible. To achieve this noble aim, we have placed our tables strategically in the most prestigious casino’s world over. They are real Unique Selling Propositions for us and our clientele.”

“Lastly, we look forward to servicing our first set of gamblers from the United Kingdom soon. We are also eager to demonstrate to them just how spectacular and special live casino gaming can turn out to be by leveraging our services.”

The company is to distribute its products and services through a variety of middlemen and intermediaries. These include the LeoVegas, Mr. Green, and the various Kindred Group brands like Unibet. It intends to use the latter’s state-of-the-art cut-the-ribbon live studio facilities in Malta.

All these intermediaries are holders of the United Kingdom Gambling Commission licensure. They are therefore safer and more reliable to work with. This guarantees all the gamblers the safety of their investments at all times.

Its services are entitled, ‘Arena.’ They are generally designed to deliver the most authentic live roulette experiences to the users. They feature six tables that comprise four different roulette game formats. These include the classic, VIP, speed, and the “never-seen-before” Blaze variety.

The games are set against a background of the blaze and are complete with a table that is lit with LED light and accompanied by a giant video screen on a wall that completes the theme. It waits to be seen how the company shall fair on in the United Kingdom market especially in light of the new regulations that have been put in place by the United Kingdom Gambling Commission.

 

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The popular Ladbrokes company is yet to face a 24- hour license suspension. On 3rd September 2018 Belgians, gaming commission issued a sanction to Ladbrokes over their blunt mistake of offering virtual chances games.

Virtual chances games are those lark games where customers put into hefty amounts of their finances to predict outcomes of some non-existent imaginary events. This kind of chance game was only entertained by law between 2012 to June of 2017. Afterward, it was banned and declared illegal by the countries law. In giving a blind eye to the ban, Ladbrokes further progressed to avail this kind of illegal services to their esteemed customers until the 14th of March, 2018.

The reports of the 24-hour license suspension were made on Wednesday by De Morgen dailies, Het Laatste Nieuws and La Derniere Heure. In effect to this sanction, the esteemed customers of Ladbrokes are compelled from making any online bet on that very day. In addition, its 300 agencies together with their vaguely projected 100 bookstores that are related to it and its digital operation will also face a 24-hour suspension on that same day.

As if this is not enough, its daughter companies, that is Derby SA and Tierce Ladbroke SA will also be immensely affected by this prevailing sanction.

In regard to the above, the gaming commision saw it wise to come up with a stringent sanction that will necessitate a 24-hour suspension of Ladbrokes online casino activities. This sanction is meant to punish Ladbrokes after realizing that they acted ignorantly to the law as they continued to carry out their virtual chance gaming activities despite them knowing that there was an existing ban compelling the activity from taking place in the country. Ignorance is paid with ignorance.

The I gambling business site, in addition, adds that the company had enjoyed a monopoly on virtual chance gaming activities in Belgium until the last day of June 2017. Throughout their time of monopoly, no other online casino site was granted the authority to offer the same virtual chance gaming services. The likes of Rocolus had possessed a number of challenges concerning this.

In addition, the company was found guilty by the commision over not having contested for facts of materiality on the same. iGamblingBusiness.com request for publication clarification was not responded to by Ladbrokes betting company.

The gambling insider site has a lot to share concerning the 24-hour license suspension of Ladbrokes. It adds that the 24- hour sanction not only applies to Ladbrokes online casino company but also any other high profile street shop that is located in Belgium. Shifting our focus from this thud slap to Ladbrokes company, there is some recent better news for their branches located in Australia. Ladbrokes as a general has another reason to smile as their Australian branches are set to launch a brand new betting accumulator product. This will be as a result of them working hand in hand with suppliers Sportscast.

 

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The authority in the UK that oversees advertising matters has recently been put to task investigating claims and complaints regarding the number of betting ads that ran on mainstream media during the world cup tournament.

Sports BettingThe authority is looking into the matter to determine whether the newly set up rules and regulations meant to curb the gambling problem are being adhered to. The companies that are the primary target of these investigations are prominent betting companies such as Bet365, Coral and William Hill.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), which is the authority that is responsible for handling and streamlining advertising matters over the course of the month-long world cup tournament received approximately 115 complaints from viewers regarding the number of gambling ads that were running during the event. This compared to the number of complaints received by the authority before the beginning of the world cup tournament is about four times more compared to the previous month. This became an issue that the oversight authority needed to take seriously and look in to.

The oversight authority, which is the ASA, received these complaints about the course of the tournament. The allegations were not all similar, but most of the complaints received were in regards to the number and the amount of air time the gambling ads were getting. Most of the viewers who sent out these complaints were unimpressed by the numerous advertisements that kept running during this time. Research by the authority has gone to show that the average viewer was exposed to approximately 90 minutes of gambling ads during the whole tournament.

The emphasis with which the gambling ads were being aired became an issue especially since the tournament did not only appeal to the adults but also to the younger generation. This means that more and more kids were watching the progress and the happenings in the world cup and by virtue, they were exposed to these gambling ads. This did not augur well with more of the adult and aware generation who felt the companies acted irresponsibly and failed to consider the children who might be exposed to the ads.

There was a whole other issue regarding these ads which involved the ads that were running on breaks trying to entice the viewers to bet with their improved odds for short periods. These ads were like a call to action buttons that featured “bet now” offers which generally attract people to take action to try and benefit from these offers.

These offers are seen as a way of calling on people to act on these offers since they usually are time sensitive and can only be utilized during a short span of time. Promoting of the time sensitivity of these improved odds is very much similar to the “bet in play, now” message which the standards of gambling advertising discourage in relation to being responsible and problem or addictive gambling.

The investigations are ongoing where the ASA is looking to determine whether or not the techniques that the betting companies utilized during this time were in breach of the UK advertising code. The Advertising Standards Authority is analyzing the complaints trying to see whether there are legal grounds to launch a formal investigation into the companies’ advertising tactics.

The oversight does not in any way regulate the number of ads that will air, and the tournament which is the World Cup is not considered as a program that specifically targets children as it does not appeal to them primarily. And because of this, the tournament is not regulated by the same rules that ban gambling companies from running ads during programs targeted or are likely to appeal to the young generation.

The oversight authority states that the promotion of unique odds during a particular game is not prohibited. The “in-play” odds as they are customarily referred to are not the problem, but the problem lies with some ads that create some urgency to place a bet which is deemed as inappropriate by the authority. These are the ads the authority will be cracking down on.

The UK only allows gambling ads to air during the 9 PM watersheds if the gambling companies are willing to advertise during live sporting events. Australia, earlier on this year, went ahead and put out a ban on all gambling ads during daytime sporting events.

The concern on this whole issue of gambling is for it being normalized. It’s supposed to be an adult activity, but as more young people grow up with the activity of gambling around them, there is the risk of them getting in too deep. As the betting companies continue to put an affiliation of sporting events with gambling, then the issue of gambling becoming a social problem is very much possible. The authority is trying to ensure this does not happen.

 

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An online gambling firm known as “32Red” was recently issued with a fine of over £2m for failure to protect a compulsive gambler and encouraging the customer to gamble further instead.

The Gambling Commission argues that the company needed to have raised an alarm and done something after identifying several addiction signs exhibited by the customer rather than offer him a VIP status.

Despite the customer depositing amounts as large as £758,000 between 2014 and 2017, 32Red did not conduct money laundering checks or acted to ensure the welfare of the customer as required by the law. Instead of offering assistance and advice, the company gave out free bonuses to encourage the vulnerable customer to play further, said the regulator. In addition, the entity failed to check if the customer was able to afford the amounts they were spending on gambling.

The customer had spent an average of £45,000 per month on gambling in spite of having a net salary of £2,150. Even though they had given the company a proof claiming that they earn a net salary of £13,000 per month, the Gambling Commission argued that it was not credible. The account was only scrutinized a little bit when the customer won a seven-figure prize and then instantly spent all of it on gambling–a warning sign of addiction.

The executive director of the Gambling Commission, Richard Watson, argued that the company should have checked on the client’s welfare after they had exhibited a gambling addiction rather than encouraging them to gamble further. But 32Red did the exact opposite of that.

He went on to say that gambling providers must be ready to take action whenever they spot signs of gambling addiction and should be carefully reviewing all the clients that seem to visit their facilities a lot more times than normal.

Watson concluded his speech by saying that protecting customers from gambling-related problems remains a top priority for the regulator and where it sees gambling companies failing in their duty to keep their clients safe, the regulator will take stern action against those companies.

Kindred, which is the parent company of 32Red agreed to pay the fine and said it had put in place a behavior-monitoring system for the good of its clients. The spokesperson of the Swedish owned multinational that is based in Malta said the organization is making efforts across the board to put together and better business processes, using best practices from all areas of the business.

The company representative further said that as a company putting sustainability at the very core of its business strategy, Kindred remains committed to ensuring customers can enjoy gambling in an environment that is safe as well as secure.

Among the changes and improvements that the company vowed to make include:

  • Introducing a better anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing policy to enable better and faster detection of the use of the company’s gambling services by criminals for money laundering or terrorist purposes.
  • Bringing in an external auditor to do a complete audit of the company’s anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing policies, procedures as well as controls while the company is ready to accept and implement the auditor’s recommendations.
  • Conducting a complete review of all existing and new customers against revised policies.
  • Integrating all entities under Kindred to one platform, so they work with a unified and aligned policy.

The company plans to raise the over £2m penalty issued by the court by divesting £709,046 off its financial gains and adding that to the £1.3 million fund it set aside as payment in lieu of a financial penalty.