SBC News

The UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) has ordered AG Communications Ltd – trading as Aspire Global – to pay £1.4m towards social responsibility causes.

Target of a UKGC investigation, the operator was found to be in breach of Social Responsibility (SR) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) procedures.

This is the second time that Aspire Global has faced financial reprimanding by the UKGC over AML concerns, having previously paid £237,600 in 2022.

Some of the newly-constituted SR breaches included a lack of proactiveness from the operator to effectively intervene in cases where a significant spend in a relatively short period of time was identified – essentially limiting the prevention of potential problem gambling behaviour.

One such example was when a customer lost £6k in 48 hours, with no safer gambling interaction initiated by the operator, according to the UKGC. The only time that the customer was contacted was when they reached their daily loss limit of £5k.

Another instance of a ..

The International Betting Integrity Association (IBIA) has welcomed Hard Rock Digital as its latest integrity partner focused on the US market.

Hard Rock Digital’s online sports betting platform (Hard Rock Bet) will now take an active role in contributing to IBIA’s betting integrity network with data feeds that will monitor for and flag potential sports betting threats.

Matt Primeaux, President and Executive Managing Director of Hard Rock Digital, commented: “Hard Rock Digital is committed to protecting the integrity of sports and ensuring a responsible gambling environment for our players.

“We’re proud to join the International Betting Integrity Association and support its mission by helping to detect suspicious activity and ensure fair play on a global scale.”

Through its IBIA partnership, Hard Rock Digital joins a network of more than 70 companies and 140 sports betting brands that are responsible for monitoring every penny out of their combined $300bn annual turnover.

Just..

An unnamed operator offering autoplay has been approached by the Dutch gambling authority, Kansspelautoriteit (KSA).
The operator has been asked to take down the offering with immediate effect, as the feature is currently not allowed under the Netherlands’ gambling framework.

Automatic play enables customers to continue wagering after each placed bet without the need to manually bet again. The KSA highlighted that since the authority views this as a potential precursor of gambling harm, it therefore has forbidden it.

The operator in question was contacted after the KSA received a tip reporting that a punter was able to automatically continue playing an online roulette table after scoring a win, and was not removed from the table.

Since the KSA was notified, it has ordered the operator to take down the autoplay function immediately and review its offering before continuing servicing customers.
In addition, the regulator has also contacted all licensed gambling providers reminding t..

The Republic of Ireland has commenced the mandate for the Gambling Regulatory Authority of Ireland (GRAI) to become operational as of 5 March.

The formation of the GRAI is a statute of the Gambling Regulation Act 2024, as sanctioned by the Houses of the Oireachtas in October 2024.

The Gambling Regulation Act will overhaul the Republic’s gambling laws, which to date have been governed by the near-century-old Betting Act of 1931.

Its mandate calls for the establishment of the GRAI as a dedicated gambling authority supervising the laws, standards, and protections of gambling in Ireland.

During the passage of the Gambling Regulation Bill (GRB), the government announced the appointment of Anne Marie Caulfield as the designated CEO of the GRAI.

Justice sign-off on GRAI board elections
An update issued by the Minister for Justice, Jim O’Callaghan, confirmed the appointment of seven board members to oversee the GRAI’s regulatory supervision of gambling.

The board of the GRAI will be led ..

GambleAware has elected Andy Boucher to serve as Chair of Trustees of the UK’s biggest independent charity preventing and researching gambling harms.

Boucher has served as a trustee of GambleAware since 2023, advising the charity on how to expand its network of stakeholders across local communities, businesses, and government ranks.

The appointment comes following incumbent Professor Sian Griffiths (CBE) announcing her retirement and stepping down from her role as Chair on 1 April 2025 when a new Statutory Levy on Gambling Harms Research Education and Treatment is applied to the UK.

Taking on the role of Chair of Trustees, Boucher is recognised as one of Britain’s leading experts in advocating policy changes to tackle social inequalities in the UK, where gambling harms are viewed as a problematic social issue.

GambleAware highlighted the broad experience of Boucher, who has served in diverse roles such as Chair of Sir George Monoux Sixth Form College, London Place Director for Busi..

Ministers in Romania have been urged to back new regulations that will impose a limit on gambling expenditure to 10% of a player’s monthly income.

The proposal headlines a package of draft measures proposed by the Save Romania Union (USR), which deems that “new accountability is needed to govern gambling” due to the damaging fallout of the National Office for Gambling of Romania (ONJN).

USR will submit a bill to Parliament, demanding new oversight of gambling licences, to be monitored by the National Bank and the Tax Authority (ANAF).

The new regulations propose capping gambling expenditure for both online and retail accounts at 10% of a customer’s monthly income. It remains unknown whether USR seeks to impose this restriction as a permanent or temporary measure, as ONJN is facing a parliamentary investigation due to “severe regulatory negligence.”

This protection will require Romanian licence holders to report real-time customer spending data to ANAF for retail expenditures and to..

The UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) has launched consultations on the new deposit limits following an announcement made last month..

Part of the Gambling Review White Paper, the requirements for license holders to ensure customers are setting deposit limits on their online spending were added by the UKGC to the Licence Conditions and Codes of Practice (LCCP).

The changes – due to come into effect from 31 October – aim to give more control back to the consumers about how they manage their gambling spend when wagering with an online operator, setting and maintaining deposit limits on their own accord.

In order to facilitate that, the UKGC has instructed all online gambling providers to prepare for the deadline by developing their own procedures, which will require new customers to set a deposit limit before making the first payment into their account.

Existing customers will also have the option to limit their spend, with the new operator controls allowing for an easier review and m..

The government of Sweden has agreed that there have been periods where the Spelinspektionen has not conducted sufficient market supervision, highlighted in a new national audit.

In its 105-page report, Sweden’s National Audit Office raised key points about the gambling regulator’s recent supervisory work, highlighting potential areas of improvement in the cooperation between the government and the authority.

The audit, which was commissioned in late 2024, reached the conclusion that the control of the Swedish gambling market has not fully met the expectations set out by the Riksdag (Parliament) and the government in the 2019 re-regulation of the market.

One of the report’s key takeaways is that Spelinspektionen has failed to carry out a sufficient number of inspections, individual checks of operators were not based on well-founded risk analysis, and there hasn’t been enough follow-ups to determine whether deficiencies have been resolved.

In this context, the Audit Office has rec..

The Dutch gambling regulator, Kansspelautoriteit (KSA), has revealed that match-fixing incidents have more than doubled YoY in 2024.

In its latest match-fixing trends report, the authority highlighted that while 2023 was a noticeably calm year in regards to sports manipulation – with only 6 incidents on record – this number rose to 13 in 2024.

While it may not seem like a significant number, the cases are worrying in nature because they’ve all occurred on the platforms of licensed sports betting providers.

In its report, the KSA reminded that while it is not legally obliged to actively detect match-fixing, it ensures that licensed gambling operators have all necessary measures in place to prevent such cases.

One of these measures includes consistent communication with the Sports Betting Intelligence Unit (SBIU) – a branch created within the system of the KSA whose job is to investigate reports of potential sports manipulation risks that have been forwarded by the licensees.

It..