On 22 January 2025, the Sanctions Committee of the French National Gambling Authority (ANJ) met to examine a procedure referred by the ANJ Board concerning the operator SPS Betting, which had allegedly failed to comply with its obligations relating to the self-exclusion system offered to players on the Unibet website and application. The Committee confirmed the breaches and imposed a public penalty of €800,000, justified by the large number of players who were unable to benefit from this protection system. This decision, which is unprecedented in its scope, is a reminder of the Committee’s commitment to penalising operators who fail to meet their obligations to prevent excessive gambling.

In 2021, following reports, the ANJ services discovered a computer malfunction on the “Unibet.fr” application and website for devices using the iOS operating system. According to estimates by the ANJ and the operator, several thousand players who had requested self-exclusion for a period ranging from several weeks to several months were likely to have been able to play again within a few days. In fact, players self-exclusion requests made in months were automatically converted to days. Therefore, a player who requested a twelve-month self-exclusion was only self-excluded for twelve days.

For players who wish to take a break from gambling because they feel vulnerable or need to take a step back, the legislator has introduced a system of self-exclusion from gambling.

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Online gambling operators must provide players with a mechanism enabling them to request their exclusion from gambling. Players are free to determine the duration of their exclusion, which must be a minimum of 24 hours and a maximum of 12 months.

The malfunction at Unibet occurred from 2 March 2021 to 11 December 2022 before being fixed by the operator. However, during an update, the malfunction reappeared and affected players playing on an iOS device from 29 December 2022 to 2 February 2023. In total, the anomaly persisted for almost 22 months.

In view of these repeated malfunctions and given their duration and seriousness, particularly regarding the prevention of excessive gambling, the Sanctions Committee confirmed the breaches observed and imposed the following penalties:

• A fine of 800,000 euros;

• The publication of the decision in the Official Journal of the French Republic;

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• The display, from 17 to 31 March 2025, on the homepage of the ‘Unibet.fr’ website and the Unibet applications, of a box mentioning this sanction and referring to the press release published on the ANJ website;

• The publication of the non-anonymised decision on the ANJ website, from the date it is pronounced and for one year (until 3 March 2026). After this date, the decision published on the ANJ website and on Légifrance, as well as the associated press release, will no longer allow the operator to be identified.

This decision may be appealed to the Conseil d’État within two months of its notification.

The UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) has imposed a fine of £1,407,834 on AG Communications Limited for Social Responsibility (SR) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) failures.

The operator, which trades as AspireGlobal and runs 58 websites, will pay the money to socially responsible causes as part of a settlement with the Commission.

Social responsibility failures included:

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• not having effective systems in place to prevent customers spending significant amounts of money in a short period of time before an assessment was made as to whether the customer was potentially at risk of gambling related harm. This raised concern that velocity of spend was not identified or acted upon quickly enough

• failing to conduct a safer gambling interaction despite one customer losing £6000 in 48 hours. A telephone interaction was attempted but only when the daily loss limit of £5000 in 24 hours was reached

• one customer was able to deposit and lose £7000 in just over four hours in the early hours. This customer was able to play through the backstop in place at the time due to a system error which failed to prevent the customer from depositing above the backstop limit. A manual review of the customer did not identify the fact they had played through the backstop trigger

• one customer was able to open a significant number of gambling accounts despite the fact they had previously self-excluded.

Anti-money laundering failures included:

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• AML/Counter Terrorist Financing (CTF) policies and procedures were too reliant on financial thresholds

• when customers hit a medium, medium/high or high ML risk score they were not subject to a manual Enhanced Customer Due Diligence (ECDD) check until a financial trigger was hit

• when financial thresholds were reached, there were delays in completing ECDD checks. One customer who reached the financial threshold did not have an ECDD review conducted until a week later

• not following its policy regarding ECDD checks. One customer who reached a financial threshold but did not have a high AML risk score, did not have a manual ECDD review until eight days later. This was contrary to AG Communications Limited’s policy.

This is the second time AG Communications Limited is facing regulatory action – in 2022 the operator paid £237,600 for AML failures.

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John Pierce, Commission Director of Enforcement, said: “This case marks the second occasion that this operator has been subject to enforcement action. Its failure to uphold anti-money laundering standards, delays in necessary interventions, and deficiencies in social responsibility measures are wholly unacceptable.

“Today’s outcome underscores the gravity of these breaches. It is essential that operators not only implement and maintain robust anti-money laundering policies, procedures, and controls but also act swiftly and decisively in response to any indications of suspicious activity. Effective social responsibility measures must be in place at all times to ensure that consumers identified as at risk receive timely and appropriate intervention.

“This case stands as a clear warning to all operators that repeated regulatory failings will result in increasingly stringent enforcement action.”