Regulators urged to act on deliberate marketing to at-risk gamblers
11 April 2025
Clean Up Gambling has called for Britain’s gambling regulator to take enforcement action on gambling companies which misuse personal data to target at-risk gamblers with marketing rather thaninterventions to reduce harm. Further reporting by The News Movement.
Clean Up Gambling (CUG) is calling on the Gambling Commission to act after the recent High Court ruling against Flutter owned Sky Betting & Gaming for unlawfully using the data of someone clearly suffering with a gambling addiction, which led to them receiving more inducements and marketing messages so they would gamble more.
In a letter sent to the Commission’s CEO Andrew Rhodes, the organisation urges the regulator to ask all their licensees to review data use practices in light of the court judgment and take enforcement action where it’s shown gambling companies fall short of their obligations.
The court case also revealed the extent of sharing of personal data between online gambling operators and various third parties in the AdTech industry. CUG is therefore also writing to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) to investigate these profiling and marketing practices in the online gambling industry and data sharing more widely.
Sky Betting & Gaming collected granular data on the unnamed claimant who was suffering a serious gambling addiction. They used around 500 data points that were updated continuously in real-time to build algorithms that could predict his future behaviour, such as the likelihood he’d be enticed into trying a new product, or propensity to take up a special offer.
This led to an intensive marketing campaign that fed the claimant’s addiction, who went on to lose tens of thousands of pounds. He received an average of two emails a day from Sky Betting & Gaming that prompted him to take up bonuses, offers and free bets.
The claimant challenged the lawfulness of this processing in the High Court, and won.
Despite all the information held on the claimant, only simplistic monetary value thresholds were used to trigger safer gambling controls, which Sky Betting and Gaming said he did not reach despite losing £45,000.
Rather than being an isolated case, this behaviour from gambling companies is believed to be prevalent across the sector. This is why BBW and CUG are today calling on the Gambling Commission – which has the power to remove operating licenses from those that fail in their regulatory duties – to ensure the hundreds of other gambling companies it oversees improve their data use practices.
Latest Gambling Commission official stats show that 2.5% of the UK population is identified as suffering from “problem gambling”. Research has shown more than a third of people suffering “problem gambling” receive daily incentives to gamble, compared to just four per cent of those not suffering gambling harm.
Matt Zarb-Cousin, Director of Clean Up Gambling, says:
“The Gambling Commission must ensure the firms it oversees are putting the protection of consumers over the pursuit of profit.
“The current regulatory framework has not led to any detailed examination into the effectiveness of operator harm prevention measures, with crude controls clearly falling well short of what’s required.
“We’re urging them to do more to improve standards, and reduce the harm caused by predatory industry practices.”
Jake Hurfurt, head of research and investigations at Big Brother Watch, says:
“It is frightening to see how companies target vulnerable customers using micro-targeted adverts, based on data collected via questionable consent mechanisms. Micro-targeted advertising encourages mass-scale data surveillance of all of us, but in truth few really understand what data is collected or how it is used.
“Companies should ensure that explicit consent mechanisms exist before they collect data on this scale, rather than burying an explanation in complex privacy policies. Big Brother Watch believes there is a strong argument that micro-targeted ads should be banned altogether – especially when vulnerable people are in the crosshairs.”