Financial Times: accusations against Betfair

Few people have certainly heard of Flutter Entertainment, even if they belong to zealous sports betting participants-even though the British provider looks after six million sports betting customers worldwide and has a stock market value of £ 4.8 billion. From Betfair, on the other hand, everyone should have heard. In fact, the sports betting brand Betfair belongs to the flutter entertainment that was formerly created by the fusion of Betfair with Paddy Power. A report by the Financial Times now brings the group into a shortage of explanation. Because supposedly Betfair should enable certain customers to place betting anonymously. But what about the rumor?

Flutter Entertainment rejects allegations

After one Financial Times report The British bookmaker scene is currently not to be fully correct on the online platform. Because although the British Gambling Commission Clear rules for sports betting providers and other gambling companies have apparently still existed through which weak points are still Placed betting in an illegal way can become. according to the report, the report is about the possibility of to give betting anonymously. according to the common law, serious sports betting providers are obliged to verify the identity of their (new) customers, which is why the presentation of a valid id document is common with every online betting provider where you register. among other things, this is necessary to prevent illegal machinations such as money laundering. the financial times now wants to have found that the provider betfair maintains several partner betting sides on which bets can also be handed over anonymously. about so -called Offshore betting agencies if the respective people are to be forwarded to the betfair partners’ pages, where ultimately indirectly and anonymously can be accessed to betfair’s betting portfolio. shortly after the report of the report, flutter reacted entertainment with a public statement in which all allegations are rejected and the seriousness of betfair is confirmed. it was also pointed out that all b2b partners of betfair were obliged to relevant Customer data on request for inspection to provide.

“Our B2B partners are all licensed operators who comply with high verification standards. Before we enter into cooperation, we subject the B2B partners, as well as the connected parties and their associated operating licenses of intensive examination. (…) As a licensed provider, all of our partners adhere to the identity tests specified by their local authorities. ”

Journalists place test betting

So how did the reporters of the Financial Times come to the view, Betfair could maintain an illegal betting system? Allegedly, the reporters are supposed to connect to a gaming agency based in Curaçao via a specially created email address with the name AsianConnect88 have built up. From this book maker mediation platform, login data for another platform is said to have been sent by email, which bears the name 9Wickets, which in turn is official B2B partner of Betfair. The highlight: all financial transactions were only anonymized via AsianConnect88 by using an e-wallet. Nevertheless, the reporters had access to the Betfair Exchange betting platform. Good to know: betfair exchange is a betting platform founded in 1999, which differs from other betting exchanges in the fact that not special events but also against them can be typed. betfair exchange is operated by flutter entertainment. as mentioned, the journalists acted under an anonymous user name and gave an outsider bet on one Horse racing in Brighton (quote 250 to 1 for “miss recycled”), whereby the probability that another customer placed this bet was very low. the journalists noticed that an identical bet on the main page of betfair was made almost simultaneously with their bet. in the end, the outsider horse won and gave the journalists a win of £ 2,000 sterling. in order to ultimately find out who the winner of the bet on the official side of betfair, the journalists asked for the disclosure of the name. with a Reference to applicable data protection regulations however, the request was rejected. the u.k. gambling commission has so far been covered with the accusations. it remains to be seen whether the accusable in view of betfair’s reference to the legally binding data protection regulations prove as a stab.