It hasn’t been a good week at GVC Holdings HQ.
The holding company that owns both Ladbrokes and Coral has been found by the UKGC to have failed to carry out social responsibility interactions going back to 2014.
The worst part for them is that they didn’t even run the two bookies until 2017 so they are largely paying the price for someone else’s mistakes, although it has been stated that these problems have persisted since that time.
They will pay £4.8 million in fines and divest £1.1 million, and investigations are underway to see if any more failings can be found.
What Have They Done Then?
Both bookies failed to carry out ‘source of funds’ checks for gamblers wagering large amounts of money in short spaces of time.
A customer at Ladbrokes had 460 attempted deposits to his online account declined and had asked them to stop sending promotions, but the company still allowed the customer to lose £98,000 over a two and a half year period.
Over at Coral, one customer lost £1.5 million over a 3 year period and in one 4 week block lost £64,000. The customer logged into their account 10 times a day on average over this time.
This sort of behaviour should have been picked up on and explored as part of every bookmaker’s responsibility to protect their players and promote responsible gambling.
Worse still, some of the money was found to have come from illegal activity, so failing to combat money laundering is also on the charge sheet.
The executive director of the Gambling Commission, Richard Watson said:
Who are GVC?
GVC Holdings plc are a large company with four different business segments. Gambling brands is one of these segments and alongside Ladbrokes Coral they also operate Gala, PartyPoker, bwin, BetDaq, and many many others.
They also provide B2B solutions having developed betting platforms for sports betting, casino, bingo, and poker, that are used by 50 different companies.
The company was incorporated in 2014 and Ladbrokes Coral are arguably their largest acquisition to date, costing them £3.2 billion pounds.