Gambling Commission

The frozen funds represent royalty payments received by the Premier League from French digital collectible firm Sorare SAS under an official fantasy football non-fungible token licensing agreement signed in November 2022.

The NCA sought the four-month extension, which would maintain the order to the statutory two-year maximum, to investigate whether the proceeds derived from unlicensed gambling following criminal charges brought against Serrari by the UK Gambling Commission under the Gambling Act 2005.

The judge rejected the Premier League's opposition under the Proceeds of Crime Acts, where they had claimed the funds were received in good faith without notice.

Instead, he ruled that reasonable grounds for suspicion persist given the ongoing regulatory prosecution, the Premier League's ring fencing of incoming fees, and its filing of a defense against money laundering suspicious activity report.

It's decentralized and broken into pieces.

You have the UK Gambling Commission, which licenses the operators.

But the operators themselves are required to report suspicious activity to a different body, the Sports Betting Intelligence Unit, the SBAU.

And then you have a third layer, the International Betting Integrity Association, the IBIA.

But in practice, the problem with the UK's federated model is what the report calls coordination risk.

Yes.

The gambling commission regulates the bets.

Pro ref regulates the referees.

I'm curious how prediction markets, if it's changed, uh, who's using prediction markets versus betting, your traditional sporting betting venues in Europe, or if you've seen behavior change there.

Well, look, in, in the UK, we have Betfair Exchange, and Betfair Exchange has been a licensed exchange by the UKGC-

Yeah

...

The former Conservative Party campaign director Anthony Lee and his wife Laura Lee have pleaded guilty at Southwark Crown Court to cheating at gambling by placing unlawful bets on the date of the 2024 UK general election.

According to the Gambling Commission and court proceedings, Anthony Lee obtained confidential information regarding the timing of the election call and placed more than 60 successful bets totaling £1,549, standing to win approximately £15,000.

Laura Lee, who was a parliamentary candidate at the time, placed eight successful bets totalling £535, which yielded around £5,000 in profit.

Following their guilty pleas, two counts for Anthony Lee and one count for Laura Lee, the couple are scheduled to be sentenced in October this year, while trials for 10 other co-defendants are set for late 2027 and early 2028, following the earlier guilty plea of former MP Craig Williams.

It's there for us to report on.

It's there on the Gambling Commission's website.

We see when they pay off settlements.

We see when a company is suspended.

And there's actually a broader discussion, which is about responsibility.

What we think, what do you guys think? Should the responsibility of a Premier League club be when it partners with an operator that does not hold a UK license but at the same time claims to target customers in other markets?

I think if you look at the Gambling Commission rules, all they require is that football clubs ensure that UK customers can't access these sites.

But as Patrick's already touched on, as we know, with the use of VPNs, you can place yourself anywhere in the world realistically.

Your KYC process needs to be flexible enough to comply with specific regional regulations, but also scalable.

Think about GDPR in Europe or the UK Gambling Commission's requirements.

They're quite rigorous.

Then you look at emerging markets in Africa or Latin America, where frameworks might be less stringent, but are evolving rapidly.

You know, a, a, a bet is a contract between, um, the, the ga- you know, the customer and the bookmaker.

I think the only people that can invo- void a bet are the Gambling Commission, which they can do under the Gambling Act.

But I'm not sure it's for any regulator to say, "Don't pay out." I'm not sure they have the power.

It depends what the rules are, doesn't it? Like, I think, uh-

Yeah, so yeah, that's the end of the racing review.

With the big topic, lads, with the, uh, the ceasement trade or ceasement, the cessa- cessation of trading with, uh, Bresbet and Bet St. George.

So bookmaker Bresbet ceased operating on Friday after the Gambling Commission suspended its license last week.

The bookmaker, which launched in 2021, had its license suspended following a commission investigation which identified so- suspected social responsibility and AML findings.