UKGC Fines Sky Betting & Gaming £1.17 Million

This week the UKGC announced that they've fined operator Sky Betting & Gaming £1.17 million for sending out a series of erroneous promotional emails during the fall of 2021.

The incident took place in November and saw the company's Sky Vegas brand sending out a promotional email to 41,395 self-excluded gamblers, as well as 249,159 people that had opted out of receiving emails from the brand. Making matters worse, the email was sent during Safer Gambling Week.

Sky Bet parent Flutter Entertainment admitted to the breach, and noted that the email was sent in error. The company apologised and said that they're going to strengthen internal controls to ensure the lapse doesn't happen again.

Regarding the fine, UKGC CEO Andrew Rhodes said, "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.

"We would advise all operators to learn from Sky Betting and 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 and Gaming allowed any of the self-excluded customers to actually gamble, failed to cooperate, and not taken decisive action aimed at preventing a repeat."