Britain’s Gambling Commission agreed a £900,000 settlement with Petfre Gibraltar after finding social responsibility failings in Betfred’s online betting and gaming operation. The payment is in lieu of a financial penalty and will go to the UK government’s consolidated fund.
John Pierce on Betfred controls
John Pierce, the Gambling Commission director of enforcement, said: “Diligent implementation of effective policies and procedures are the cornerstones of safer gambling in Britain,” He said Petfre Gibraltar did not have sufficiently effective procedures in place, meaning some customers displaying markers of harm were not contacted quickly enough.
The review ran between October 2023 and June 2024 and found failings in Social Responsibility controls and in compliance with the Licence Conditions and Codes of Practice. It also found shortcomings in customer interaction systems and processes at Betfred that did not effectively minimise the risk of customers experiencing gambling harm.
Seven-day alert gap
The systems were designed so that a customer flagged for intervention would not trigger another alert for the next seven days. During that period, an at-risk customer could potentially lose a significant amount without any further intervention. The gap came from a lack of automated processes and delays in customer interaction processes.
Pierce said: “While the gaps we identified were unacceptable, the licensee acted swiftly to implement interim mitigating controls to address our immediate concerns. They have since delivered an appropriate action plan and taken significant steps to assure the Commission that their current operating model meets our requirements,”
He also said: “The failure to implement an effective monitoring framework to identify and contact consumers at risk of harm at pace has resulted in a significant regulatory settlement. We expect all operators to learn from this case and read the public statement to ensure they do not make the same mistakes.”
Petfre Gibraltar and Britain
Petfre Gibraltar is the online betting and gaming arm of Betfred. The company was previously fined £2.87 million by Britain’s Gambling Commission in September 2022 for social responsibility failings, and it agreed a £240,000 penalty with the Gambling Commission in 2025 for breaching online slot regulations in the UK.
The new settlement leaves the company facing another regulatory consequence for the same broad area of controls: how it identifies customers at risk and how quickly it follows up. The source does not set out any further enforcement step after the payment to the consolidated fund.
