Gambling giant unlawfully bombarded suicidal gambler with ads

A gambling giant unlawfully targeted a problem gambler with adverts, the High Court has ruled.

In a landmark legal ruling, Mrs Justice Collins Rice said that Sky Betting & Gaming acted unlawfully by collecting extensive data on Sam – not his real name – profiling him, and selecting him for marketing campaigns as a “high-value” customer when he was heavily in debt and suicidal.

Campaigners hope this ruling will change advertising practice across the gambling industry to better protect vulnerable people.

Lack of protection

A spokesperson from Sky Betting & Gaming stated the company ‘fundamentally disagrees’ with the judgment, and that protecting customers is its “number one priority”. The multi-billion pound corporation is considering appealing the ruling.

Sam shared: “I lost 10 years of my life to gambling. I believe I – and a lot of others – should have been protected better”.

He said: “I thought, well, if they had all this data on me, why didn’t they use it to protect me better?”

Now recovering from his addiction, Sam explained: “The marketing made me gamble more, gamble when I didn’t want to, and prevented me when I wanted to stop gambling”. He added: “It played a significant role in increasing the harm I suffered.”

Addiction

The court heard that even if the claimant had gambled his entire salary, it would not have triggered any safeguards. Justice Collins Rice said the bar for the so-called protections to kick in were so high they were not “realistically possible” to reach.

Ravi Naik, a lawyer from AWO law firm representing Sam said: “They had taken his addiction and turned it into code”.

The lawyer said he hoped the ruling would be a “death knell for this kind of pernicious activity: tick-boxes, mass surveillance and data sharing, all unbeknownst to the user”.

Better regulation

Charles Ritchie from Gambling with Lives, a charity that supports families bereaved by gambling, said: “Operators are using data and algorithms to target people with more incentives to gamble when they should be using that data to meaningfully intervene.

“Gambling companies have been preying on people for many years in this way. We know data tracking is widespread across the industry. The regulator needs to step in to ensure it is used legally and focused on preventing harm.”

Will Prochaska, leader of the Coalition to End Gambling Ads, commented: “This court case opens the lid on one operator’s practice but the real question is why the regulator allowed this to carry on for so long”.