CMA calls the bluff of dodgier online gambling businesses
Comment Martin Flanagan
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has not “gone all in” as poker aficionados say. But the competition regulator has certainly “seen and raised” the online gambling industry on its dodgier practices.
Shares in bookmakers slipped yesterday after the CMA said it is to take enforcement action against members of the industry suspected of breaking consumer law.
The area particularly exercising the competition watchdog is the internet gambling companies’ sign-up promotions. Some of them try to attract new punters on to casino-like gambling websites by offering bonus cash when they put in their own money.
So far, so good. But the CMA says those old friends of ours, “terms and conditions”, can be confusing and unclear. Most disturbingly, some online gambling outfits are unfairly holding on to people’s winnings as part of the deal. Players “find a whole host of hurdles” in their path when they want to withdraw their money, says the CMA.
It cites a punter who might bet a tenner of their own which is then matched by £10 from the online betting company. However, the small print of the agreement might state that the customer has to play many, many times within a certain period before they can cash in their winnings. A clear case of customers rolling loaded dice.
Initially, the CMA is to use its soft power to try and get the miscreant companies to play fair. But if they do not change their equivocating, thumb on the scale ways the CMA says it can take them to court where sizable potential fines, or even absolute revocation of bookmaking licences, are a possibility. A bluff may have been called. On the wider canvas, the regulator’s shot across the bows of the online gambling sector looks also to be part of a wider trend.
To wit, the authorities not going with the grain of gambling now, unlike the greater liberalisation of the Blairite years when the industry was viewed as a cash cow and a more laissez-faire regulatory spirit held sway.
A separate review of fixed odds betting terminals – crack cocaine for the shiftless as they have been branded – is also set to blow a big hole in the industry’s revenues.
A lucrative sector is under a harsher spotlight.