The UK Gambling Commission has fined Sky Bet £1.17 million for illegal email marketing practices.
The firm’s Sky Vegas brand sent promotional material to customers who had opted out of receiving marketing communications, in violation of GDPR rules.
On 2 November 2021, a Sky Vegas offer of “Bet £5 get 100 free spins” was sent to 41,395 self-excluded customers and 249,159 customers who had unsubscribed from the online casino’s promotional emails.
This error meant that the gambling operator was in breach of licencing conditions governing social responsibility that stipulate “licensees must, as soon as practicable, take all reasonable steps to prevent any marketing material being sent to a self-excluded customer”.
“Self-excluded customers are likely to be suffering gambling harm and should absolutely not be sent direct marketing that could tempt them back into gambling,” Gambling Commission chief executive Andrew Rhodes said.
“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.
“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 cooperate, and not taken decisive action aimed at preventing a repeat.”
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Flutter UK & Ireland chief executive Conor Grant said the betting firm “takes its responsibility to protect customers extremely seriously but on this occasion, we did not do enough”.
As soon as the error was identified, we ceased communications until the fault could be rectified, notified regulators and apologised to the affected customers.
“We also conducted a thorough investigation into what went wrong, the results of which were provided to regulators, and have put in place measures to ensure that this cannot happen again.
“We accept the Gambling Commission’s findings and once again apologise to those customers who we let down.”
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1 Comment. Leave new
I was sent 18 emails to get free spins in four weeks loosing all my money because of this left for seven hours gambling not once being told how long I had done this for not once asking can I afford to bet loosing £1509 plus