{"id":238850,"date":"2025-12-18T07:27:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-18T07:27:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/238850\/"},"modified":"2025-12-18T07:27:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-18T07:27:12","slug":"paddy-power-owner-shows-its-hand-on-responsible-gambling-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/238850\/","title":{"rendered":"Paddy Power owner shows its hand on responsible gambling \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Betting companies make a big show about responsible gambling. <\/p>\n

Back in October Peter Jackson<\/a>, who leads Flutter Entertainment<\/a> \u2013 the parent company of Paddy Power and Betfair<\/a> \u2013 spoke about how his company is \u201cdetermined to lead\u201d in the area. The interview is prominently<\/a> reported on Flutter\u2019s own website. <\/p>\n

Jackson \u2013 who was paid more than \u20ac19 million<\/a> in salary and bonuses last year \u2013 also talks about the \u201cFlutter Edge\u201d which allows the company to develop and refine tech advances in one part of the business and roll them out globally, including when it comes to responsible gambling.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Paddy Power fined by UK regulator over problem gamblingOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Given that, what to make of the UK Gambling Commission fining Paddy Power and Betfair \u00a32 million (\u20ac2.3 million) on Wednesday?<\/p>\n

The details are horrifying, and reinforce the worst ideas about industrialised online betting. The commission\u2019s report is worth quoting at length.<\/p>\n

Among the failings, the company did not have systems sensitive enough to \u201cidentify indicators of harm with one customer depositing \u00a312,000 during a 15-day period before being identified for review and another depositing \u00a325,000 in 25 days before being interacted with\u201d.<\/p>\n

Another \u201clost \u00a312,300 in five weeks before being identified for an interaction\u201d.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile \u201cone customer staked \u00a386,000 over a 16-day period during which time they lost \u00a36,000. Despite the high velocity of spend, no manual review of the account took place.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another \u201cdisplayed concerning behaviour in terms of intense spikes in activity without interaction, with their longest session throughout a 17-day period being seven hours and 46 minutes during which they placed over 300 bets amounting to \u00a320,000. Their gambling behaviour was only identified as an indicator of harm after hitting a loss trigger at which time the account was manually reviewed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Paddy Power and Betfair co-operated fully with the investigation, implemented an action plan and accepted their failings early on. Yet as the commission said, \u201cthis immediate response is the minimum we expect from operators\u201d.<\/p>\n

Is this a one off? Clearly not \u2013 the UK regulator fined the company in 2023 for marketing to vulnerable customers. <\/p>\n

Perhaps Flutter\u2019s own tech isn\u2019t up to scratch and needs investment to stop this happening again. Maybe the company should invest more in staff on the issue of responsible gambling. <\/p>\n

But what if Flutter isn\u2019t bothered about these fines when it\u2019s made $478 million<\/a> in adjusted Ebitda for the third quarter of the year?<\/p>\n

Jackson says all the right things when it comes to responsible gambling. Yet actions speak louder than words. In this case, his company\u2019s actions speak volumes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Betting companies make a big show about responsible gambling. Back in October Peter Jackson, who leads Flutter Entertainment…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":238851,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[276],"tags":[125659,2355,18,75457,5256,135,19,17,167,502,2549,55595],"class_list":{"0":"post-238850","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-betfair","9":"tag-cantillon","10":"tag-eire","11":"tag-flutter","12":"tag-gambling","13":"tag-health","14":"tag-ie","15":"tag-ireland","16":"tag-mental-health","17":"tag-mentalhealth","18":"tag-paddy-power","19":"tag-peter-jackson"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115739390335685682","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238850"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238850\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/238851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}