MoPlay/Betfred deal

J4P promised on Twitter about three weeks ago to find out more about this deal and its legality.

On Twitter and on our forum we asked for people who were willing to share their experiences both positive and negative concerning the deal.  Unsurprisingly, the responses were primarily negative.  J4P thanks all who replied.  Those who replied with a positive experience require a special note, because people rarely do that.

J4P then recruited a group of 10 people who were owed money and asked if they would support J4P, if and when, either the Gambling Commission (GC) or the Competition and Market’s Authority (CMA) asked for evidence.  A special thank you to these 10 people, despite neither the GC or CMA asking for their evidence.

The same email was then sent to both the GC & CMA. It follows here:

Dear *,

I write to you in the hope that one or both of your organisations might consider investigating this deal.

‘Justice for Punters’ (J4P) has been collecting information from gambling customers and it appears that Betfred are treating people quite differently without providing sufficient information as to why. I would like to think I might be able to say, “I’m surprised,” but I’m not.

According to the liquidator, “Please note that the customer accounts and customer balances were not sold. The consideration received for the transfer of the customer accounts is the agreement of the transferee that they would honour customer balances. The reason why we selected three separate transferees covering three separate regions is because these were the three best offers we received. When deciding which offer was the “best” offer, we considered which transferee had agreed to accept the largest number of customer accounts and was willing to honour the highest value of customer balances.”

This quote makes it abundantly clear that some MoPlay accounts will not be honoured, which begs the question as to why UK customers have not been told this, be that by the companies or the regulator?

J4P put out a call on our Twitter timeline for people to get in touch with us if they’d had no problems with being paid monies that were in their MoPlay account when Betfred obtained the customer list. We are delighted to say that some people responded stating that everything went smoothly, albeit in some cases their Betfred account was closed immediately. This does suggest that Betfred may have been given access to, not just basic personal account details, but all trading notes on each account? These privacy issues are another thing for another day though.

One company that provides services for punters and many individuals have been in touch with J4P stating that Betfred is refusing to refund monies in their MoPlay account. These customers are simply referred to the liquidator by Betfred with no or little information about why this is the case. Of course, these people will likely receive nothing from the liquidator (see: https://www.pwc.gi/services/assets/Addison_Global_Limited-Preliminary_report.pdf)

The Guardian has published a story about this issue: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2020/apr/19/betfred-accused-of-withholding-funds-from-punters-despite-pledge?CMP=share_btn_tw#maincontent and continues to investigate the situation both in the UK and in Gibraltar.

None of the volunteers at J4P are lawyers. We are also not in a position to pay for legal advice on behalf of these customers who surely have a right to know why they are being treated differently?  You can probably guess that the vast majority of these MoPlay customers were either winning customers with MoPlay and/or Betfred, although one person has admitted to self exclusions with other companies since publication of the Guardian article.

J4P has written permission from 10 affected customers to share details of their experience with both your organisations, but at this point all we ask is that one of your organisations provides an insight into the rights of these people and whether Betfred is allowed to ‘pick and choose’ who it deals with on the customer list? The basic understanding of J4P is that they this may not be legal, but you may know differently?

Finally, the accounts provided by the liquidator appear to suggest that Addison, and a group of linked companies and brands received a UK gambling licence despite those companies never being solvent without massive leverage from loans. In fact, did they have any assets at all?  Why is this allowed, in what is a highly risky financial business.

We look forward to your feedback. With thanks in anticipation.

Yours sincerely,

Brian Chappell

Founder – ‘Justice for Punters’  

 

After 7-days, because there had not been an acknowledgement of J4P’s email let alone an answer a polite reminder was sent.  An apology was received and around another 7-days later a full response.  The following is a summary of an extensive reply:

• Confirmation that customer accounts/balances were not sold to Betfred.
• Betfred acquired ‘relevant’ (see later as to the meaning of this), not all, customers’ data, as well as liability for those account balances.
• The liquidator, not the GC, decides how assets (including the customer base) are dealt with. The terms on which another gambling operator chooses to purchase that customer base is a commercial agreement between the liquidator and the purchaser.
• It is important to note that Betfred did not acquire MoPlay’s UK customer list in full and automatically assume responsibility for all of those customers. So it seems, Betfred (for whatever reason) chose not to acquire a certain group of customers (see ‘relevant’ above), which is a commercial decision that the GC cannot influence.
• To be able to access their MoPlay money, a customer needed to set up or have an active Betfred account that Betfred was willing to transfer the MoPlay money into.
• It is thought a former MoPlay customer may not have been accepted by Betfred under this arrangement for one or some of the following reasons or possibly others not listed:
  • They are a telephone or credit betting customer (J4P thinks unlikely)
  • They have been previously or are self-excluded (J4P thinks extremely unlikely)
  • Their account is frozen or suspended (J4P thinks highly likely)
• Once a MoPlay customer has been accepted by Betfred, Betfred assumed the liability to pay the cash balance in the customer’s MoPlay account as of 13 March 2020.
• The GC is aware that there are some customers who will not get their money back, but their enquiries established that at one point there was a significant risk that few, if any, of MoPlay’s customers would have any funds returned to them. In the circumstances, whilst the GC recognises that this will not provide comfort for any customer who lost money, the GC does feel that the sale of the customer database under the terms of a contract did produce a better outcome for the majority of customers in what was an unusual and difficult situation (despite not being ideal, J4P does see the sense in this).

J4P hopes we have represented the GC’s reply, Betfred, MoPlay and the liquidator correctly, but if not J4P apologies and will change any text immediately, if asked.

Next, the following is a summary of J4P’s reply to the aforementioned: