Ian Mallon: Punter who lost €64k with bet365 lost 39 bets in-a-row in midnight binge
THE PITCH INVESTIGATION: The world’s biggest bookmaker, Bet365 – run by the £260m-a-year CEO and co-founder Denise Coates – told a chronic Irish gambler who lost €64,040.63 with the company, that it was ‘sympathetic but satisfied’ with its supervision of his activities.
The world’s biggest bookmaker, Bet365 – run by the £260m-a-year CEO and co-founder Denise Coates – told a chronic Irish gambler who lost €64,040.63 with the company, that it was ‘sympathetic but satisfied’ with its supervision of his activities.
An investigation by The Pitch can reveal that the firm oversaw a litany of red flags and concerns which ended last month when bailiffs arrived to evict the man from his Dublin home over a rental debt of €25,000.
It was only then that man’s family uncovered a catastrophic pattern of gambling behaviours which they say were “enabled and carried out in plain sight of Bet365 and its problem gambling supervisors”.
Among the activities which Bet365 facilitated or failed to prevent, were:
- Watching as the man lost 39 consecutive bets over a 22 hour losing streak from 12:15am on February 18 until 10pm the following evening, amassing €1,680 in losses.
- Sending him offers of ‘free spins’ for its online casino – described as the ‘crack cocaine of betting’ – just days after his losing binge
- Doing nothing about the staker’s highly irregular betting activities which began at midnight on the 18th of each month, as soon as his wages hit the bank
- Allowing him to gamble for extreme periods of time – 13 days, 17 hours and 45 minutes from March 2022 to February 2023
- Facilitating a chronic period of activity in October 2022 when he spent 60 hours on the Bet365 site gambling and losing €2,500 for the month – his net take-home pay
- Repeated attempts to entice him to gamble with ‘bet credits’ offers and further ‘Have some spins on us…’ enticements as soon as his activity and financial levels bottomed out.
The Pitch has been presented with a catalogue of data by the man’s family including dashboards for the year up to February 28, which shows that after staking twice his average net income - €63,330.66 – he lost €15,960 – losing money every month he played.
His family believes that if they had access to his dashboard for his seven years with Bet365 it would show consecutive monthly losses without any upswing.
The addict – who we will call John - was afforded the ‘luxury’ of no deposit limits for his ‘24-hour’ and ‘7-day’ betting activities by Bet365, with a limit of €20,000 placed on his monthly staking – eight times his income.
Not once did Bet365 carry out financial due diligence with its customer or did it prevent him from betting once his erratic behaviours were identified.
On the evening of Sunday March 5, John contacted his brother – a significant figure in the betting and racing industry - to tell him that he was to be evicted from his home the following morning.
Over the next 24 hours the sheer scale of the damage which John had inflicted on himself was revealed, and a litany of failures were discovered.
Through an extraordinary series of communications the firm told John that while it had “sympathy” with his situation, Bet365 was “satisfied” with its oversight of his account.
In an interview with this newspaper, John’s brother, described Bet365’s behaviours as “rogue and deeply inhumane”.
“It was something to learn that John was in serious financial trouble and was gripped by a chronic gambling issue, but when we dug down and realised how much of this was conducted under the supervision of Bet365, it became truly shocking,” he explained.
“Through the various dashboards, you could see a distressing pattern of what was clearly a problem gambler, not only due to the consistency and scale of his losses, but the time of the day and month when he would start his binges.
“Bet365 didn’t need a complex set of algorithms or trend charts to see that this was someone completely out of control.
“What sort of firm, after everything we’ve learned about the betting industry in recent years, can allow such erratic behaviour to go on?” While John lost far greater amounts of money during his time with Bet365 than the €1,600 he dropped on the February 18 losing streak, his family believe that the firm “wilfully enabled and actively encouraged” him.
With the support of his family, after his addiction was discovered, John began contacting the company to discover why it did nothing to help him. First he requested his overall P&L of activities since he started betting with Bet365 in 2016, the firm’s ‘Responsible Gambling Support Supervisor’ Laura Ha wrote: “I can confirm that from the 25/03/2016 – 04/03/2023 your account loss is €64,040.63.”
John then asked “why my deposit limit is so high (without proper) due diligence?” and inquired whether the “amount of time on (the bet363) website should be ringing alarm bells?”.
He asked about the time of the bets placed – “a sure indicator of problem gambling” and why “nobody reached out with (an) affordability check?” as well as Bet365’s repeat sending of ‘free spins’ for its casino games.
John’s brother then contacted Bet365’s chat facility to advise: “I’m stunned and shocked to see he was allowed carry on without anyone reaching out.”
Eventually John was told that his case was being reviewed, which was followed by a series of emails from the firm’s Responsible Gambling Support Deputy Manager Christopher Naughten who said: “I would like to express my sympathy.” However, Naughten added: “I can confirm that I am satisfied with the handling of your account.”
The lack of duty-of-care by Bet365 towards an Irish customer will be down to a pre-regulation vacuum that exists here, and allows betting firms - particularly UK operators - to go unchecked in what is still a lawless and unregulated state.
William Hill – which was last week fined a record £19m by the Gambling Commission in the UK for “widespread and alarming failures” – has resisted signing up to the Irish Bookmakers Association’s Safer Gambling Code.
Regulation is still trudging on a legislative journey through the houses of the Oireachtas with no date identified for it to be passed into law.
The situation, said John’s brother, is “like the last days of Rome where betting operators are grabbing and feasting on all they can, before they are held to any type of rule of law.
“In every way John was their perfect customer, someone who always lost, and lost big, but who always came back to give them more money, like clockwork, beginning at the same time every month.”
John, with his family’s support, is now receiving intensive counselling and rehabilitation, which his brother says has “undoubtedly been a life-saver”.
Bet365 did not respond when contacted by The Pitch to comment on the case.
