Gambling Commission Fines Evoke £115,762 for Compliance Breaches

As a result of the investigation both WHG (International) Limited, the licensee behind William Hill, and 888 UK Limited were found to have breached regulations laid out by the social responsibility code provision (SRCP) in the regulator’s Licence Conditions and Codes of Practice (LCCP). They will be fined £82,687 and £33,075 respectively.

Operators must be able to identify when an individual has more than one account with them, and they must ensure that the individual’s behaviour across each account is taken into consideration when enforcing compliance measures and responsible gambling tools. For example, if the customer self-excludes on one account, this must carry across to any other accounts they hold with the operator.

As per the SRCP “Licensees which are companies or other bodies corporate must take all reasonable steps to comply with the above provision as if reference to a customer holding more than one account with them included a reference to a customer holding one or more accounts with them and one or more accounts with a group company.”

The GC undertakes regular licence reviews to check for breaches and compliance issues, however this information was submitted to them directly from both licensees outside of this period. A spokesperson from Evoke said: “During routine compliance testing, we self-identified a technical issue, which was immediately reported to the Gambling Commission and fixed.”

The GC have not identified any specifics regarding what the breaches were, but they have recognised that William Hill and 888 “proactively” raised this issue themselves and immediately acted on it. Evoke maintains that they are “resolutely committed to our responsibilities as a regulated operator and ensuring that our customers play in a safe and responsible way.”

In spite of this, the GC has declared that both operators will receive a hefty combined £115,762 financial penalty for these breaches. This comes after the GC recently vowed to make changes to the way it calculates and imposes fines against its licensees. From 10 October, the GC will be using a sliding scale based on the seriousness of the breach to determine the appropriate financial punishment.

It will be interesting to see the way these changes impact the UK gaming industry and whether we see an increase in operators self-reporting any potential breaches before they come into effect.