March 2, 2016

We all know that Paddy Power love a good headline and aren’t too fussed about how it comes their way – Oscar Pistorius and 5,200 complaints to the ASA? Ah, who gives a feck!?! However their latest foray into the newswires is accompanied by a £280,000 fine, £27,250 costs and a 6-page ‘Public Statement’ from the Gambling Commission. Even Paddy’s splendidly puckish sense of non-conformism is likely to have taken a wee dent from this regulatory sledgehammer from Birmingham.

Two of the three instances of Paddy’s non-compliance cited by the Commission involved patterns of compulsive and suspicious gambling in land-based betting shops. The third involved a punter using stolen money to gamble. The verdict of the Commission was that although ‘Paddy Power had social responsibility and anti-money-laundering policies and procedures in place, had delivered training to staff and had systems for monitoring internal compliance’, Paddy’s arrangements were not fully in line with the Commission’s guidance, staff on the ground did not fully understand those arrangements and Paddy’s internal compliance monitoring had failed to identify the issues. The spirit, it seems, was willing, but the flesh was weak.

The front cover page of the Commission’s ‘Public Statement’ on the matter states that the issues identified are likely to form the basis for future compliance assessments of all other licensees. As with previous instances of non-compliance investigated and publicised by the Commission, the shortcomings of Paddy Power are expected by the Commission to be a regulatory lesson – and warning – pour encourager les autres. Part of the ‘settlement’ between Paddy and the Commission is described as an ‘agreement to share learning from the cases with the remote and non-remote sectors’ although the description of the facts in the ‘Public Statement’ and the ‘Questions for operators to consider’ appended by the Commission are probably as much as one needs in order to deduce the applicable lessons.