Millions in Donations for gambling addicts BeGambleAware

In the past nine months around 4,46 million GBP flowed from British casino operators to the gambling addiction aid BeGambleAware. This is coming from a list of donators, which was published lately on the website of BeGambleAware. The highest single donators were the gambling giants William Hill and Flutter.

In the Yearly Report titles “2020/21 Supporters“, the gambling addiction aid published the names of companies and individuals which have donated to the organisation. On the supporter list one can find many famous gambling companies, as for example William Hill, Flutter or the 888 Holdings.

A company donated solely already 874,000 GBP

The list of donators is being quoted in this Financial Year by the operators of Betfair and Paddy Power, of Flutter Entertainment plc. This gambling company, has already donated the sum of 874,000 GBP to the British gambling addiction aid in the current Financial Year, which ends on the 31^st. March.

Till the Financial Year ends at the end of March, the situation could however change.  Indeed, the competitor William Hill has donated just 540,000 GBP till now. However several months ago, he had promised to donate over one million GBP in this Financial Year.

A further major donor of the gambling addiction aid is the British traditional company bet365. Those responsible donated a total of 763,000 GBP to BeGambleAware in the current Financial Year.  Those who take a further at the list of donators will see that the Software Company Gamesys Limited is at the fourth place with a donation sum of 450,000 GBP, as well as the British Gambling giant Betway, which till now has donated 134,000 GBP.

These gambling companies support the British gambling addiction aid:

Source: Own research

Over four million GBP total donations

BeGambleAware generated a total amount of donations amounting to 4,5 million GBP between the beginning of April and the end of December. Converted, according to the current rate of exchange, this would be around five million.  Initially one might think these are large donations from the online gambling industry, but for some of the gambling concerns, this is actually peanuts.

Basically BeGambleAware expects, that every British gambling company which makes a profit from gambling, should donate 1 % of its gross turnover to the organisation.

The British Gambling Authority (UKGC) prescribes that its licence holders donate this percentage of their income to any gambling addiction aid of its own choice. The companies however are free to decide which organisation they want to donate to, so that it is not necessary that the money has to be donated to BeGambleAware. Only shortly we reported about the fines, which the UKGC had issued to its licence holders, because these had partly not followed its regulations.

Donation amounts expandable

From the above table, one can see that the Flutter Entertainment plc had for example a yearly turnover of around 2,14 billion GBP in 2020 and therefore donated the amount of 874,000 GBP to the gambling addiction aid BeGambleAware. Converted the amount which the gambling company donated to the gambling addiction aid does not even come up to 0.05 % of its total turnover. It must also be mentioned, that Flutter Entertainment has also committed funds to help finance other projects as well.

Industry leaders want to clearly increase the donation amounts

Over a year ago, several leading gambling companies had announced, that they want to increase the donation amounts significantly by the year 2023. Till then, one wants to increase the donation share from the total turnover (GGR) to 1 %. This is, at least, what Entain, Flutter Entertainment, Sky Bet, bet365 and William Hill announced. That could at least be the first step, to be able to control gambling addiction better in the future. On the other hand the British gambling companies also currently have other projects going on, since Brexit will finally be completed on the 1st. January 2021 and here there will be several effects on thegambling industry (we will report). 

Conclusion

In all, the gambling companies and supporters have already donated 4.46 million between the beginning of April to the end of December of the past year.  The three “Top-Donators“ Flutter Entertainment, William Hill and bet365 are responsible for around half of the donations. Last year, the British traditional company William Hill had already promised to donate a million GBP by March 2021. This would make William Hill the highest single donator. It is a fact, that the gambling companies definitely have the responsibility to help out in the fight against gambling addiction and therefore donate money for this cause. Finally it is the gambling companies themselves which make a profit from it, at times amounting to turnover in billions.

Image Source: https://pixabay.com/de/photos/abenteuer-höhe-klettern-berg-1807524/