CYNICALLY GROOMED BY A BETTING GIANT
Secret emails expose tricks by Betway to help its ‘top losers’ stay gambling
A MAJOR bookmaker ‘groomed’ gambling addicts by bombarding them with personal messages and showering them with cash bonuses, secret documents reveal.
Betway – which sponsors West Ham FC, the Grand National and Test cricket – ruthlessly targeted its ‘top losers’ to lure them into betting millions of pounds they could not afford to lose.
Personal ‘ VIP managers’ befriended addicts and engaged in chatty conversation via emails and messages. The emails reveal how they poured ‘bonus’ money into their accounts – even if the gamblers were openly admitting they were losing money.
Bonuses were paid on players’ birthdays and hours in advance of one- off promotions. The firm also treated high-rollers to all-expenses-paid trips to sporting events including the Champions League, FA Cup, Cheltenham races, and incentives to bet included possible trips to Las Vegas.
The astonishing details of how betting firms lure in clients and keep them hooked are exposed in secret documents obtained by the Daily Mail that reveal the unvarnished schemes. truth about Two men controversial who were addicted VIP betting to gambling used ‘subject access request’ data protection laws to obtain details of their dealings with Betway.
One, Ben Jones, has been jailed for stealing £370,000 from his employer to fund his habit. Last night, Betway admitted paying compensation to the company after Jones was jailed for three years in November – a tacit admission that the gambling giant’s dealings with Jones contributed to his criminality.
The secret emails also showed how Betway VIP manager Simon Kent offered cash bonuses to Jones even after he admitted he was on the ‘ worst losing streak I’ve ever had’.
In another email, Jones tells Mr Kent he was ‘giving up’ on gambling after suffering too many losses. In response, Mr Kent merely says he will ‘have a look at your account and get some bonus added after a break’.
The disturbing revelations come after the Mail exposed how FA Cup games were being streamed live on betting websites to fans who opened an account. Health Secretary Matt Hancock has backed demands for betting firms to immediately end ‘shameful’ incentives that lure punters into a ‘vicious cycle’.
Last Wednesday, NHS mental health chief Claire Murdoch wrote to all major gambling companies saying the health service should no longer be expected to ‘put out the fires’ they start. Betway turns over £282 million a year and is based in the offshore tax haven of Malta. Incredibly, its owner is unknown and it operates behind a shadowy web of offshore companies. Its tactics are revealed in thousands of pages of documents detailing transactions all and the emails bets, financial from the two men’s accounts. In the case of Jones, 30, from Nottingham, Betway staff failed to spot that he was using up to £30,000 a month of money stolen from his employer. Staff handed him £39,000 in bonuses between September 2016 and November 2018 to entice the former public schoolboy to keep betting.
The married father-of-two was finally caught by his boss in 2018 and was jailed for three years for the £370,000 fraud at Nottingham Crown Court.
In a second case, documents show that a father from the northwest of England was handed £865,000 in cash bonuses between October 2015 and December 2017 to keep him betting. He claims he was gambling using family money that was not his to spend.
Betway did send ‘responsible gambling’ emails which laid out ways punters could seek to control their betting and both men lied to the firm about their habits. But these messages were outweighed by far by the number of messages encouraging them to bet.
Labour MP Carolyn Harris, chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on gambling harm, said: ‘It is outrageous that Betway is offering huge inducements to people to gamble when they clearly are in no position to do so. The Gambling Commission must look into this.’ The Gambling Commission declined to comment on Jones’s case.
Betway said: ‘As a responsible licensed operator we take these allegations extremely seriously.
‘In the case of Ben Jones, who was jailed for stealing funds from his former employer, we have already reached a settlement agreement with the victim of his crime to compensate them for their loss. Betway would never seek, nor does it wish, to profit from any illicit and misappropriated funds wagered on its site.’
‘Worst losing streak I’ve ever had’
BRITISH sport was once synonymous with old-fashioned values and Corinthian spirit.
No longer. Our national games – especially football – have been corrupted by moneycrazed suits grubbily jumping into bed with grasping gambling companies.
Don’t get us wrong: The Mail is not pious about betting. An occasional flutter gives harmless pleasure to millions.
But we are deeply troubled at how modern online bookmakers, who claw in £14billion a year, deploy breathtakingly cynical tactics to lure punters into ruinous addiction.
Today, we reveal how Betway uses sharp practice to groom high rollers. Secret documents obtained by our reporters show how murky ‘VIP managers’ befriend big spenders via texts and email and urge them to try to win ‘mega moolah’.
To keep losing customers hooked, the firm hands out tickets to major sporting events or cash bonuses – spurring them to fritter eye-watering sums on bets.
Is this fun? Ask the man jailed for stealing £370,000 from work to feed his habit.
These horrific tales of dependence surely dispel any lingering qualms about the iniquitous consequences of Labour’s 2005 Gambling Act. The sporting authorities must now take a stand and stop selling their souls to these betting behemoths.
In the 1980s, sports reluctantly ditched lucrative tobacco sponsorship, warning they’d wither without the money. They survived. Football, awash with cash, could lead the way in the 2020s. That, truly, would reflect the Corinthian spirit.