Football Pools will pay £375,000 as part of a settlement with Great Britain’s Gambling Commission after social responsibility and anti-money laundering (AML) failings were uncovered.
An investigation found that the operator’s approach to AML risk profiling and monitoring was “insufficient,” according to John Pierce, the regulator’s director of enforcement.
He added that Football Pools’ failings allowed high-risk customers to continue gambling before completing necessary enhanced due diligence checks.”
“In addition, the licensee was over-reliant on financial alerts that whilst preventing significant losses meant it failed to engage in a timely manner with some customers who were potentially experiencing other markers of gambling-related harm such as time spent gambling and high velocity spend,” Pierce said.
The Gambling Commission’s public statement on the case says that Football Pools accepted it breached paragraphs two and three of Licence Condition 12.1.1 because “manual reviews did not always occur promptly, which meant that hard stops were not put in place in a timely manner, if at all.”
Meanwhile, “ineffective internal systems” meant some customers were not identified for safer gambling interactions.
“The system was ineffective at providing safer gambling messages to customers who had opted out of marketing, which led to delays in interacting with such customers who were exhibiting markers of potential harm,” the statement added.
The failings, which took place between September 2022 and August 2023, related to Football Pools’ online activities as opposed to its non-remote pool betting.
Pierce said: “While it is recognised that necessary improvements have been made by the licensee following the completion of the compliance assessment, the Commission will take further action if these standards are not maintained."
The £375,000 will go to socially responsible causes.
