How to turn a good news story into another bad headline The UK High Court ordered Paddy Power to pay out a £1m jackpot after it told a winning customer that she was only due £20,000 because of a computer error. Mad Hatter: Gloucestershire resident Corrine Durber, who won the jackpot playing on the Wild…
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..
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..
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 ..
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 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..
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 ..
France’s Autorité Nationale des Jeux (ANJ) has fined Unibet (unibet.fr) a record €800,000 for a significant malfunction in its self-exclusion system that led to thousands of self-excluded players being able to access gambling services despite having signed out of the products.
The issue affected iOS users, lasted nearly two years and led to ANJ issuing its largest fine to date, as the ANJ was established in 2020 as the “unified authority” of French gambling,
The problem arose during the period of March 2021 to early December 2022, and was corrected by Unibet. However issues reappeared due to a technical malfunction from the end of December 2022 to February 2023.
ANJ’s report explained that SPS Betting, the company that operates Unibet.fr, did not contest the findings, but said ANJ was unable to determine how many players had “actually suffered damage”.
It maintained that the numbers involved could “not have exceeded more than 100 players”, although it could not prove that was the c..
Andrew Rhodes has stated that the Gambling Commission looks forward to a year of providing transparency in regulatory developments through research and evidence.
Speaking at the Betting and Gaming Council’s (BGC) 2025 AGM, the CEO of the UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) presented a ‘high-level’ overview of the year ahead for regulatory projects, programmes and initiatives.
Hosted on 28 February, the BGC’s AGM coincided with the Commission decreasing the financial vulnerability threshold for online gambling deposits from its test phase of £500 to a live environment of £150 per 30-day period.
The application of deposit thresholds will initiate a period of regulatory changes for licensed operators, who must contribute funding to a new Statutory Levy on problem gambling harms from 6 April and apply £5 and £2 stake limits on online slots from 21 May.
Rhodes noted that new online requirements come as the Commission monitors stable trends, saying: “Recent data published shows that total gros..
GamStop has raised concerns about the increasing rate of problem gambling and addiction among British students.
The warning follows the publication of the Fourth Annual Student Gambling Survey, co-commissioned by GamStop and its partner, YGAM.
Conducted by Censuswide, the survey is the most comprehensive of its kind, involving 2,000 students from universities across 17 UK cities, with 49% reporting they had gambled at least once in the past 12 months.
Findings indicate that more than one in six students who gamble fall into the problem gambling category, a significantly higher rate than the general population. Research highlights that 17% of students surveyed were classified as high-risk gamblers under the UK gambling Problem Gambling Severity Index (PGSI), with a further 29% placed in the moderate-risk category.
Concerns are elevated as research highlights the financial vulnerabilities of gambling on UK students’ lifestyles, in particular of young males.
As detailed: “Men’s mean ..