FashionTV Gaming Group – History of a Rogue operator
We were contacted by a representative of BetFashionTV.com who asserted that there was a “misunderstanding” and that they were a totally different operator to the one we currently have reviewed as Bet FashionTV. The email we received was as follows:
“I think there is a serious misunderstanding here . Betfashiontv is a brand new casino that was just launched lately this year at app mid-2017 , that honors its commitment in full and have not one single problem with any player and not one single complain .The operator of the brand is Aspire Global, a major public company and very reputable one …That pays players instantly as part of their service agreements with all the many brands they operates.These complains as described below are connected to betftv ,a different brand, you can see that it was under different operator and software provider ,also betftv was casino and sport and Betfashiontv is casino only etc .You can also look at the dates of these complains ,to understand 100% that they were last year , all related to Betftv and not Betfashiontv ,that just went live by mid this year, 2017.
Dear [EDIT]
We kindly ask you to remove this post urgent ,as its creating betfashiontv brand ,a huge damage for no reason. Will appreciate your prompt reply and the positive resolution of this matter Thanks and best regards”
It’s understandable that BetFashionTV would want to distance themselves from the historic complaint issues associated with the BetFTV brand. In each of 3 complaints that came into our service BetFTV failed to pay a player a significant sum. Even when their regulator of the time – Gaming Curacao – ruled in favour of the player, no funds were paid out. In fact, Gaming Curacao stripped BetFTV of their license. This only made issues worse for BetFTV as their support continued to claim that they held a valid license even after we had direct conformation from Gaming Curacao that they were no longer licensed.
It’s not hard to see that this sort of activity is something any reputable operator would want to steer well clear of.
So why do we view BetFTV.com and the new BetFashionTV.com to be one and the same? For a couple of reasons:
1) Most obviously both these properties are using the FashionTV brand. To date there have been no claims of this brand being used without license by either website.
2) Both these casinos were operated by the Fashion TV Gaming Group. This can be demonstrated by examining the various websites then and now.
BetFashionTV.com currently states that they are owned by the “Fashion TV Gaming Group”:
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The Fashion TV Gaming Group’s website states that they operate BetFashionTV.com:
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If we look at the web archives for the Fashion TV Gaming Group’s website, we can see that on the 15th of August 2015 (https://web.archive.org/web/20150815222450/http://ftvgaminggroup.com/company-strategy/) the site was actively promoting BetFTV.com
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If we look a little further we can see that the Fashion TV Gaming Group’s website is still using screen shots for BetFTV.com to advertise their casino product:
16th of August 2015 (https://web.archive.org/web/20150816000240/http://ftvgaminggroup.com:80/casino/):
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Current Fashion TV Gaming Group website:
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With only a very slight change to the logo being used in the image, the new screen capture clearly has its roots in the old site design.
There is no doubt that the Fashion TV Gaming Group was the owner of BetFTV.com and is now the owner of BetFashionTV.com. Claiming that these properties are not associated is fundamentally inaccurate. They may have closed their previous gaming website and re-opened on a new platform with better licensing, but this does not make Fashion TV Gaming Group any less responsible for the malpractice of BetFTV.com, the unpaid debts owed to players or the fact that they blatantly disregarded regulatory rulings and falsely claimed a license they no longer held. The Fashion TV Gaming Group do not get to expunge their extremely questionable history simply by shifting license and url.
As such we have rejected out of hand any claim that BetFashionTV can or should be viewed as a “new casino”.
While preparing this document some other information came to light connecting the Fashion TV Gaming Group to another extremely rogue group of operators, the Game Tech Group N.V.
This video posted by Deuce Club Casino – one of the Game Tech Group N.V. original casino operations – in 2013 shows them advertising a partnership with “FashionTV Casino”:
At 0:14:
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In fact the casino appears to have started life as a sub-domain of the Deuce Club casino website (at 0:27):
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To further support this apparent link we can see that the Deuce Club Casino Facebook page posted about this partnership:
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IncomeAccess covered this story:
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As did AskGamblers (https://web.archive.org/web/20150701193249/https://www.askgamblers.com/deuce-club-casino-partners-with-fashiontv-n5726):
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The point here would be that the Fashion TV Gaming Group started off their life in online gaming working with a group that are one of the most widely rogued operations in the industry. They then went on to open their own property where they engaged in actions that have to be considered rogue in their own rights. Now they’ve managed to re-open as a white label on a more reputable license, something that the Game Tech Group N.V. appear to have been trying to do for a while (see https://www.casinomeister.com/forums/online-casinos/80114-new-uk-oceanbets-affpower-sites.html#post847090).
Does this mean that there’s still an association between these groups? No. There’s not enough evidence to support drawing that conclusion. But the parallels in the attitude of both of these companies to the management of their players is stark and a clear warning that players should steer well clear.