Evoke Hit with £115k Penalty After 888 and William Hill Failures

The guilty parties are WHG (International) Limited, the company that licenses William Hill, and 888 UK Limited. They concerned allowing individual users opening multiple accounts with the operators. This is a direct breach of the social responsibility code provision (SRCP) outlined in the regulator’s Licence Conditions and Codes of Practice (LCCP).

The GC reports that these infractions were in violation of the SRCP condition 3.9.1. paragraph three.

“Licensees which are companies or other bodies corporate must take all reasonable steps to comply with the above provision as if reference to a customer holding more than one account with them included a reference to a customer holding one or more accounts with them and one or more accounts with a group company.”

The GC did not further specify the nature of the infraction.

Licensed operators are required to have policies and procedures in place to identify and shut down accounts opened by existing users, including thorough KYC checks.

Every account a user owns must be subject to any compliance measures an operator takes. This has multiple implications for the customers, particularly in relation to responsible gambling. For example, if they choose to self-exclude on one of their accounts, these measures should be applied across other accounts under the same licence.

This also means that all accounts owned by one player must be supervised, and activity from all these accounts must be used to determine any interactions with them.

Both William Hill and 888 found these breaches outside of a licence review. The regulator said that they “proactively” reported them to the GC, who then conducted their investigation.

A spokesperson from Evoke stated that “During routine compliance testing, we self-identified a technical issue, which was immediately reported to the Gambling Commission and fixed.”

“We are resolutely committed to our responsibilities as a regulated operator and ensuring that our customers play in a safe and responsible way.”

The GC’s statement aligns with this, adding that “officials note the remedial action that was taken by the licensee and acknowledge that the licensee co-operated with the Commission throughout the investigation.”

Despite their cooperation, the Gambling Commission is still on track to deliver invoices to WHG (International) Limited and 888, whose penalties will be £82,687 and £33,075 respectively.

This story has come at a time of great change surrounding how fines are calculated and issued to licensed gambling companies. Last month the GC announced the nature of these changes, which include using a variable scale to determine how harsh financial penalties should be.

These adjustments will come into effect from the 10th of October.

Evoke’s penalties, and the discussion around them, will encourage gambling providers to be more stringent with their checks regarding customers’ accounts. This will mean greater consumer protections, including an improved effectiveness of responsible gambling tools for customers who have chosen to activate them on their accounts. A renewed focus on business practices and the resultant tightening of KYC checks will protect UK gamblers in the future.