Bet365 risks driving families to financial ruin


Bet365 risks driving families to financial ruin by failing to implement recommendations designed to protect drug addicts, critics warn

  • Bet365 hasn’t made any changes to protect gambling addicts on their site
  • The bookmaker has experienced massive growth and the general manager has given himself a bonus
  • Behavioral Insights team report urged betting companies to remove prompts
  • The authors said the high caps led customers to set much higher limits and recommended their removal.










Bet365 risks driving families into financial ruin by failing to implement recommendations designed to protect drug addicts, critics said.

Researchers working with the company had found that a small change to the company’s website would discourage overspending.

But nearly a year after the report, Bet365 has not made the switch, with critics accusing the company of “putting profits before people.”

The exclusively online bookmaker has seen massive growth, allowing billionaire CEO Denise Coates to pay himself £ 469million in a single year – a record for a UK executive.

Researchers working with the company had found that a small tweak to the company’s website would discourage overspending (stock image)

Research by the Behavioral Insights Team (BIT), an advisory organization part of the Cabinet Office, urged betting companies to remove prompts that highlight massive deposit limits.

Limits allow bettors to voluntarily cap the amount they can put into their account in any given month.

But the authors said extremely high caps led customers to set much higher limits and recommended their removal.

However, this week Bet365’s website still offered the option of a limit of £ 500,000 for a single month. In response, the bookmaker, which generates £ 2.8 billion a year, said the change “should be implemented in the coming months”.

MP Carolyn Harris, Labor chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Gambling Damage, said: “Bet365 risks driving families into financial ruin by offering customers ridiculous and unaffordable deposit limits.

“It puts profits before people, delaying vital changes even when presented with data from its own customers. It is beyond comprehension.

But the authors said extremely high caps led customers to set much higher limits and recommended their removal (stock image)

But the authors said extremely high caps led customers to set much higher limits and recommended their removal (stock image)

Dr Philip Newall, member of the Safer Gambling Advisory Board, which advises the Gambling Commission, said: “The industry says they only do things factually, but here is a field study benchmark showing what it could do, but even Bet365 failed to put the results into practice. ‘

The BIT report found that customers who were not offered very high limits set deposit limits of £ 866 on average, 45% lower than before.

These punters also deposited nearly a fifth less, as much as £ 1,020 a year – although the study’s authors warned they couldn’t rule out the discovery was due to chance due to the limited sample size.

Bet365 said: “Since the publication of the report, Bet365 has continued to introduce developments and improvements to its industry-leading, safer gambling strategy and practices, and the change in deposit limits mentioned should be made. implemented in the coming months.

“Player deposit limits are just one part of a system of player-driven checks that Bet365 offers, which also includes ‘timeouts’, self-exclusion and ‘reality checks’.

Ms Coates’ £ 469million salary for 2019/20 was a 45% increase from the previous year and more than every FTSE 100 chief executive combined. His salary was also 699 times what Bet365 had given to GambleAware, a charity that works to reduce the damage caused by gambling in the UK, under the government’s ‘voluntary levy’ scheme. industry.