Sky Vegas Slapped with £1.2 Million Fine

Sky Betting and Gaming’s casino subsidiary, Sky Vegas, has been slapped with a sizeable fine due to an ill-judged ‘free spins’ campaign administered at the height of the coronavirus pandemic.  This punishment is coupled with a considerable erosion of brand credibility in recent months due to the affair.

In November last year, UK media outlet The Guardian, revealed that Sky Vegas had dispatched a promotional e-mail to a staggering 41,395 punters who had opted out of receiving such collateral in an attempt to stop gambling. Furthermore, this offer was also sent to 249,159 who had actively unsubscribed from the e-mail marketing channel.

Social responsibility efforts have been a keenly debated topic across the UK industry in recent months, with the government poised to publish a white paper on proposals for gambling reform. Sky Vegas’ contravention fine is the latest in a series of punishments dished out to some of the country’s major operators. Just last week, 888casino were reprimanded for their lack of customer care also during the peak of the COVID crises, with vulnerable players losing serious funds through lack of intervention and support. Last month, Bet Victor received a £2m fine for failures in anti-money laundering practices, social responsibility efforts, and fair betting conditions.

Sky Betting and Gaming, owned by gambling giant, Flutter Entertainment, had sent a ‘Bet £5, get 100 free spins’ message to the 41,395 high-risk individuals.

‘’We would advise all operators to learn from Sky Betting & Gaming’s costly errors and ensure their systems are robust enough to always prevent the self-excluded, and those who have clearly rejected marketing, from receiving promotional material’’ stated Andrew Rhodes of the Gambling Commission, the regulator who wielded Sky Vegas’ heavy penalty. He went on to emphasize that the cost could have been higher if Sky Betting & Gaming hadn’t responded accordingly, ‘’this latest fine would have been a lot higher had Sky Betting & Gaming allowed any of the self-excluded customers to actually gamble, failed to co-operate, and not taken decision action aimed at preventing a repeat’’

Stakeholders await the content of the government’s gambling white paper, set to be released towards the end of March.