The UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) has announced a decision to impose a financial penalty on the current holder of the operating licence for the National Lottery – Camelot UK Limited – because of the company’s failures associated with its mobile application.
The announcement was made only days after it became clear that Camelot is set to lose the National Lottery licence as the country’s gambling regulatory body officially named Allwyn Entertainment as its preferred applicant for the fourth operating permit of the NL.
On March 23rd, 2021, Camelot UK Lotteries was officially notified of the then-ongoing investigation that was carried out into 3 incidents by UKGC officials. As a result of the probe, the country’s gambling regulator concluded that three breaches had occurred. In considering what sanction was appropriate to be imposed in line with the violations, the National Lottery Committee of the UKGC took into consideration outcomes for the players involved, outcomes for the National Lottery, the financial gain of the NL operator occurring as a result of the non-compliance, the governance and controls of the licensee, as well as the outcomes for Good Causes.
The UKGC revealed that the fine, worth £3.15 million, was imposed after a probe into the company’s operations found that 3 failures resulted in negative consequences is set to be paid by the current operator of the UK National Lottery entirely to good causes.
Three Failures Linked to the National Lottery Mobile App Found by the UKGC
As part of its first failure linked to the mobile app of the National Lottery, Camelot UK Limited had informed up to 20,000 players that their winning draw-based ticket won nothing when they scanned their tickets with the QR scanner – a function within the NL mobile app enabling players to scan individual Lottery ticket QR codes with their smartphones and instantly learn whether their ticket wins a prize or not. The wrongdoing occurred in the period from November 2016 to September 2020.
The investigation held by the UKGC found that the National Lottery licence holder was unable to identify the exact number of customers who had been affected by the issue. Camelot estimated that up to 20,000 scans may have shown the incorrect non-winning messages in the aforementioned period. The National Lottery Committee concluded that the company had violated conditions 5.1, 5.13G(c)(ii), 7.42(a) and 14.7(a).
As announced by the UK Gambling Commission, the second failure of the National Lottery license holder involved 22,210 individuals who had bought a single draw-based ticket through the NL mobile app but had eventually been charged for and received 2 tickets. All of them have been identified and reimbursed for the duplicated wager or received duplicate payments when duplicate wagers were winners.
The issue occurred between October 13th and October 23rd, 2020. As found by the UKGC investigation, an error occurred so the affected players were logged out of the application rather than seeing the confirmation for the ticket purchase. Such players were presented with the “Buy Now” page once again, which is why many of them had been led to believe they had not managed to complete the first purchase. The National Lottery Committee announced that, in this case, conditions 5.1, 5.13G(c) and 14.7 had been violated.
A third failure related to the mobile application of the National Lottery was also found. The UK gambling watchdog’s investigation found that, in the period between February 2018 and January 2021, the NL’s mobile app sent marketing messages, called push messages, to users who had opted for self-exclusion through the GAMSTOP scheme or Camelot found them to have been showing signs of gambling addiction. However, none of the 65,400 players who received the marketing messages in question had been allowed to purchase a National Lottery product.
The National Lottery Committee concluded that conditions 5.1 and 14.7 had been violated.
- Author
Olivia Cole
