Sam* logged into his online betting account and gambled five days’ worth of wages on August 15, 2018 at 1:17 PM. He was already deep in debt with 13 loans taken out over three years and his marriage was under strain. He was desperate to quit.
However, Sky Betting & Gaming, which operates Sky Bet, Casino, and Vegas, had other ideas. They labeled Sam a “high value” customer and sent him an email promising a £100 bonus if he spent £400 on a casino game. “It had a grip on me,” Sam said, referring to the relentless marketing he received.
Over two years, at the height of his gambling problem, Sky Bet emailed him multiple times a day, pushing promotions that were hard to ignore. Internal records show that out of the 1,389 promotional emails sent to him, Sam engaged with 98% of them. A judge has now ruled this targeting to be unlawful.
While Sam may not have explicitly opted out of these promotions, he was gambling compulsively and was in no state to consent to the use of his data for profiling and targeted marketing. Mrs. Justice Collins Rice stated that despite his craving for promotional offers, Sam’s life was falling apart—he had lied to his wife, contemplated suicide, and faced severe financial repercussions.
Sky Betting & Gaming disagrees with the judgment and is considering an appeal. They state customer protection is their top priority. The high court’s ruling exposes the inner workings of Sky Bet’s practices, revealing the company’s extensive data collection system.
The company used 2,400 spreadsheets of data about Sam’s gambling habits to predict his behavior and create irresistible marketing. Despite having access to detailed information about Sam, the company failed to identify him as someone in need of help.
Sky Bet’s unlawful targeting practices
Instead, they coded him as a “high value customer” and later as someone to “win back” after he stopped gambling. Sam, now 30, first gambled in April 2009 after seeing a newspaper ad for a free football bet. Hooked almost immediately, he escalated from small football bets to losing thousands on various forms of gambling.
Despite multiple attempts to quit, including handing over control of his money to his mother and self-excluding from other platforms, his addiction only intensified, particularly with Sky Bet starting in August 2012. By 2018, Sam’s situation had become dire. He was losing around £1,793 monthly, and the strain led him to contemplate suicide.
Something finally clicked in late December 2018, and he decided to quit gambling for good. After stopping, Sam aimed to understand why Sky Bet targeted him so intensely. He submitted subject access requests to obtain records of his data from the company, revealing the extent of their profiling.
Sky Bet held hundreds of thousands of data points on him, including his gambling habits and responses to marketing, which had been shared with at least 18 third parties for further targeting. This detailed documentation formed the backbone of a legal battle. Over five days in November, the court examined how Sam was tracked and targeted, and Sky Bet’s failure to recognize his risk status.
Despite previous flags for responsible gambling and his multiple attempts to close his account, the company’s suppression measures failed to protect him. Sam’s case has highlighted ongoing issues in the gambling industry’s handling of vulnerable customers and calls for stronger regulatory intervention. “If they had all this data on me, why didn’t they use it to protect me better?” Sam questioned.
As the industry faces closer scrutiny, stories like Sam’s reinforce the need for more robust consumer protections to prevent similar situations in the future. *Name changed for anonymity.
