UK betting heavyweight Betfred has been fined £240,000 after allowing their customers to play slots that didn’t meet the industry standards for responsible gambling.
It has been a defining year for slot gaming in the UK, with the government introducing new maximum stake limits back in May.
Those backed up previous rule updates, issued back in 2021, that aimed to make slot games safer and less intensive.
However, Betfred have – according to the UK Gambling Commission – been offering games that fail to live up to the rule changes implemented some four years ago.
Posing a Clear Risk
A raft of changes were introduced into online slot gaming in the UK back in 2021.
The Gambling Commission made it a licence breach for any UK facing betting site to carry slot games that had autoplay or ‘quick spin’ features that players could use.
They also outlawed the use of ‘celebratory messaging’ when a player landed a winning spin… but where the amount won was less than what they had staked on said spin.
The argument is that such messaging can confuse players and make it harder for them to judge their true financial position – particularly when the game fails to display overall session profit/loss on screen.
These changes fed into the regulator’s new responsible game design policies, which made it an offence to offer slots that breached the revised protocol.
And yet, four years later, Betfred have been caught offering slots that fail the responsible game design standard.
According to the Gambling Commission, the games that were available at Betfred ‘failed to meet the requirements of the Remote Technical Standards (RTS)’, which are the protocol by which all slots available in the UK market must abide by.
The games in question celebrated monetary losses as wins, while failing to display the player’s net financial position from their current gaming session – that was one of the changes made to the Remote Technical Standards back in 2021.
One of the reasons why Betfred’s fine was relatively meagre – Fred and Peter Done, the firm’s owners, have a reported net worth of a combined £2.9 billion – was that Betfred acted quickly to remove the games from their website and app once they had been identified.
Nevertheless, the Gambling Commission were keen to reaffirm to their licensees that breaches of game design protocol will not be tolerated.
Their director of enforcement, John Pierce, commented: “Features that impair a consumer’s ability to make informed decisions are not appropriate and pose a clear risk.
“While we acknowledge the operator acted swiftly to remove the affected games, this enforcement action should serve as a clear signal to the wider industry to review and strengthen their compliance practices.”
This isn’t Betfred’s first entanglement with the regulator. Back in 2022, they were fined a meaty £2.87 million for a catalogue of social responsibility and anti-money laundering failings – which included allowing one player to lose £70,000 in just ten hours… just one day after they had opened their account.
A Slot of Bother
The current UK government, and its predecessor, have moved to make slot gaming one of the most regulated niches within the gambling sector.
That began back in 2021, when the changes to the Remote Technical Standards were first revealed – which achieved ministers’ stated aim of slowing down gameplay, with a 2.5 second minimum cycle in which the reels could be spun.
That, according to former Gambling Commission lead Neil McArthur, was due to research identifying a clear link between play speed and the ‘increased risk of harm to customers’.
The ability to perform a ‘reverse withdrawal’, which allowed players to cancel a withdrawal and then stake that money, was also prohibited in the 2021 guidance.
>“Evidence shows that reverse withdrawal functions present a risk to players because of the temptation to continue gambling,” said the regulator at the time as they looked to minimise the risk of ‘binge’ gambling.
In 2024, the UK government – then helmed by the Conservative Party – revealed plans to introduce stake limits for online slot gaming. Those were subsequently ratified by the Labour Party, who won the General Election in July 2024, and introduced earlier this year.
The new stake caps mean that players aged 18-24 could wager a maximum of £2 per spin, with those aged 25 or older allowed to wager £5 per turn.
Those new rules make the UK one of the most stringent markets amongst countries in which online slots are legal, with only Germany – where there’s a €1 limit per spin for players of all ages – offering more conservative conditions.
