The Competition and Markets Authority’s (CMA) intention to investigate the UK gambling industry terms and conditions has been backed by the Independent Betting Adjudication Service (IBAS) and more specifically, by its Managing Director Richard Hayler. This becomes clear at a time when the country’s regulatory body in the fact of the UK Gambling Commission has been primarily focused on various matters related to customer interaction and satisfaction.
Only ten days ago, the Competition and Markets Authority revealed that its intentions to start an inquiry on bookmakers’ potentially unfair terms and misleading practices that could be breaking the UK law. The expectations of starting such an investigation had increased this year as more and more gambling authorities have expressed their concerns on various matters, including the terms and conditions used by the online gambling operators in regard to their users.
The Independent Betting Adjudication Service was established back in 1998 as a non-statutory organisation. Over the years, it has been engaged in resolving various disputes between the gambling operators and their customers in an efficient and trustworthy manner.
Over the last few years, the Independent Betting Adjudication Service has been taking the Competition and Markets Authority’s point of view when making judgements and resolving cases. The public advice of the CMA on potentially unfair terms and misleading practices had also been taken into account by the IBAS since the Consumer Rights Act was officially introduced in 2015.
In an interview for TotallyGaming, the Managing Director of the organisation Richard Hayler commented on the announcement of the Competition and Markets Authority had not been a surprise for anyone, especially considering the fact that it had been released at a time when the UK Gambling Commission had expressed its concern about terms’ fairness on several occasions over the past 12 months.
Mr. Hayler also shared that even though he joined IBAS only five years ago, there had been only a few cases on which the organisation had not felt convenient to adjudicate on exactly because they were considered potentially unfair but still the position of the gambling operator on a certain matter could have been interpreted as issued in correspondence with the License Conditions and Codes of Practice (LCCP) of the UK Gambling Commission.
Now, the Managing Director of the IBAS said that it was encouraging to see that the Commission itself had been backing the intentions of CMA to ensure fairness and transparency for gambling customers.
- Author
Daniel Williams
