January-June 2024

We managed a total of 304 cases in the first half of 2024, of which 71 were submitted by players against MGA licensed operators that we officially act as ADR for (meaning that we have greater powers to enforce rulings) and 233 cases informally against operators for whom we do not act as a formal ADR.

To show the outcomes of complaints we are going to break the complaints into two pie charts – ADR Complaints and Non-ADR Complaints, as there are some substantial differences between the two groups:

From the above we can see:

Resolution: We are FAR more successful at securing a positive outcome for the player (Resolved) when they complain about an operator that we act as ADR for. We successfully resolved 28.2% of all cases accepted by this service when acting as ADR vs only 18.9% when acting unofficially.

Found Against the Operator: Where we have been acting officially as an ADR, we have had a 100% compliance rate with our rulings, meaning that we did not have to conclude any of these cases as Found Against the Operator (where we support the player’s claim but cannot get the operator to take appropriate action to resolve the case). When acting informally, this ruling outcome is one of the most frequent, representing 27.5% of all claims.

How much money did we recover for players in the last 6 months?

Over the last 6 months we’ve been unusually successful at recovering money via unofficial complaints, certainly a lot more successful than in 2023 in monetary terms. However, over half of the funds recovered via these complaints are tied to large claims where players recovered 5 figure sums.

However the total money recovered does not paint the full picture. The divergence in success rates between ADR and Non-ADR complaints becomes far more apparent when we look at average amount recovered per complaint:

In both cases we have been significantly more successful at recovering money for players in the first half of 2024 than we were in 2023, but we again see the same dynamic as last year: when we can act in an official capacity as an ADR the average return to players in 7x higher than when we act informally.

What does this mean? It means that if you find yourself in the unfortunate situation where you have to submit a complaint, the amount you recover is likely to be far higher if you have played with an operator that engages our ADR service to manage complaints.

So, did we favour players or operators more often?

Counter intuitively, we rule in favour of players more often when we are acting informally. Why does this happen?

We do tend to favour the player far more often when dealing with complaints informally because i) there are more questionable practices engaged by operators in weaker licensing systems and ii) more operators simply refuse to discuss complaints, resulting in a default ruling in favour of the player.

What does this mean? It means that despite supporting the player’s claim more often when we manage complaints informally, we’re far less successful at recovering money for players.

Some notable operators and complaints over the last 6 months:

- Unlicensed UK – Of the 64 cases that were ruled Found Against the Operator, meaning that we supported the player’s claim but the operator failed to take appropriate action to address our concerns, 20 were submitted by UK players against gambling operators that do not hold a UKGC license. This should go to emphasise how substantial the black market issue is in the UK and how hazardous these operators are for consumers. The operators in question were Bloodmoon Casino, Golden Lion Casino, Golden Pharaoh Casino, Love Casino, Magic Win Casino, Mr Sloty Casino, Ocean Breeze Casino, Rouge Casino, Spicy Jackpot Casino, The Red Lion Casino, and Winner Casino.

- Bogus Arbitrage Claims – We have seen at least once case in the last six months where an operator uses a term prohibiting “arbitrage” betting as a catch all term to generically mean “any sports betting activity pattern that we don’t like”. Whilst we have seen many cases like this over the years, they evidently are still occurring. Any time these issue come up, they are inevitably against a weakly licensed operator and the operator’s representatives evidence a basic lack of understanding of what “arbitrage” means.

Beyond non-compliance with the actual interpretation of the word “arbitrage” as it relates to gambling, there is a broader issue with these types of terms as relates to the fundamental requirements of consumer law requiring that consumer contracts be written in plain language that the average consumer entering into the contract could be expected to understand. There is a substantial argument to be had regarding whether the average consumer would understand the term “arbitrage” even if the operator were to use the proper definition of the term.

For reference the most notable case we have seen falling into this category during this period was against Dozen Spins Casino.

How often do operators comply with the rulings we give?

In the last 6 month every ruling we have issued as an ADR has been complied with. This is a small rise over 2023 where only 98% of rulings were complied with, but is more representative of our usual rate of compliance over the years we have been approved. It is only in two exceptional cases our rulings have ever not been complied with.

When acting informally only 40.7% of our rulings were complied with. Our leverage to enforce our rulings is substantially weaker when acting informally, meaning far fewer of the complaints where we support the player actually result in the player recovering money.

On average how long did the complaint management process take?

Why are we quicker when acting unofficially? We’re not. The lower average complaint length is a direct result of us closing many of these complaints faster because the operators involved are non-responsive. We close these complaints after approximately 21-28 days of trying to contact the operator without success. With so many of the cases in this group not receiving a response, these low figures drag the average down.

It should also be noted that we had two very long running ADR complaints in this period, 329 and 283 days. Both of the cases were ultimately resolved and the players paid, but the process of management was slowed down substantially by the complainants' haphazard or reluctant engagement with the process. If these cases are excluded from the dataset, our average ADR case management period drops to 36.5 days.

For both ADR (excluding the two complaints discussed above) and non-ADR complaints, we have seen a substantial drop in the time taken to manage complaints. We would attribute this to our new user interface that has streamlined communication between complainants and our team.

We understand it can be very frustrating waiting while a claim is managed, and it is our objective to ensure that your claim is managed as quickly as possible. But each claim is individual and some are far more complex than others. Where we have to contact regulators, payment providers, software providers etc, the length of time it takes to conclude a claim tends to rapidly inflate. Nevertheless, these cases represent only a tiny fraction of the claims we manage.

Over the last 6 months we’ve had 6 ADR complaints (8.4%) and 4 non-ADR complaints (1.7%) take longer than 90 days to conclude.

If the two cases mentioned in the previous section are excluded from the dataset (they ran over 90 days due to the inaction of the complainants) only 5.6% of claims exceeded the 90 threshold.

What do the complaints we receive relate to? Where we accept a complaint they fall into one of eight categories:

i) Problems with bonuses
ii) Opening more than one account
iii) Problems with a payment to or from an operator
iv) Problems with KYC and other security procedures
v) Basic breakdown in communications
vi) Responsible gambling
vii) Retro-active term enforcement
viii) Problems with the technical function of some aspect of the website or games

Breaking down complaints again in two groups we see:

In both sets Payment Problems and Security (generally verification issues) are the top two most common complaint types. These complaint types are closely intertwined as the most common reason for a delay in payment is incomplete verification. As such there is overlap between these groupings. If these two groups are considered together, both data sets have similar results.

There are some differences between the data sets in the categories of Bonuses and Multi-Accounting, with ADR complaints showing a higher frequency of Bonus related complaints and no Multi-Accounting issues, whilst non-ADR complaints include more Multi-Accounting issues and fewer Bonus issues. This is understandable as instances of multi-accounting are almost exclusively related to players opening more than one account to avail themselves of bonuses that they are not entitled to receive. When looked at in conjunction, these two categories represent approximately the same proportion of complaints across both data sets.

We consider a complaint abandoned when a player stops responding to our request for additional information or documentation relating to their claim. The rate of abandonment can be seen below:

We migrated our service to our new platform in the middle of February which has improved email notifications for complainants. Whilst this has not resulted in the substantial decrease in abandonment rates we had hoped for, it has still resulted in a small reduction. Non-ADR complaints have experienced a substantially lower abandonment rate since migration.

We have no sound explanation for why one group decreased and the other did not and would suggest that these data sets may currently be too small to draw conclusions from. As such we will review this again at the end of the year.

When we decline to take a case on, we do so for a variety of reasons. When acting as an ADR we cannot simply decline any complaint. It has to fall into clearly defined criteria before we decline it. When working unofficially, we do look to work to the same criteria as often as possible, but do allow for a few additional grounds for declination. We will detail below:

- The player hasn’t completed the operator’s internal disputes system (ADR) – generally, we do not decline cases for this reason, but we will direct the player to revert to the operator and allow for more time for the operator to act on the case, and return to us if they are still experiencing issues.

- The complaint is of a frivolous or vexatious nature (ADR) – This tends to be complainants who are persistent in communications that are rude, abusive or antagonistic in nature.

- Where another ADR service, court or regulatory agency has already reviewed the case (ADR) – This is self-explanatory. Much like a court, you cannot simply keep re-submitting your claim until you get the answer you want.

- Where the complaint is older than 12 months (ADR) – We do show some leeway in this and will, at our team’s discretion, review claims that are older. But the older a claim is the harder it is to obtain the necessary evidence to support it.

- Where the claim value is less than €10 (ADR) – Again we will at times set this restriction aside, but generally claims that are of this low a value have an extremely high abandonment rate and are not an effective use of this service’s times and resources.

- Where we have reasonable grounds to believe one or both parties has misled this service (ADR) – The ADR service requires good faith. Where one or both parties looks to engage in wilful deception it substantially impedes the function of this service. We reserve the right to decline to investigate a case further where we have reasonable grounds to believe one or both parties have misled our team.

- Where the workload involved in managing a complaint would impair the service’s ability to function (ADR) – Some claims involve more work to verify the claims that we can reasonably undertake. These cases are few and far between, but we do retain the right to reject claims on this basis.

- Where the claim is not appropriate for review by an ADR (ADR) – Generally where the issue relates to licensing, or lack thereof, or where the claim relates to a disputed financial transaction that is more appropriately managed by the polices or payment provider.

- Weak license responsible gambling claim (non-ADR) – Where the player’s complaint relates to responsible gambling protections against an operator who holds no license, or a license that requires licensees to provide no viable protections to players.

- Ambiguous claims (non-ADR) – Where there’s sufficient reason with the complaint submission and evidence we’ve reviewed to reasonably conclude that the player may have been involved in non-compliant activities.

- Repeated claims against weak licenses (non-ADR) – Where a player persistently chooses to play with weakly licensed operators, ignoring our warnings about doing so, we will stop accepting similar claims from them.

- Operator already offline (non-ADR) – Where the claim relates to an operator who has already closed down and as such cannot be reached to discuss the matter.

Here's how the declined complaints broke down for ADR and Non-ADR complaints:

As can be seen above we decline a higher proportion of complaints when we are managing the case informally. The reasons for this are simple – these complaint are primarily against weakly licensed or unlicensed gambling operators. These gambling operators more frequently ignore national licensing requirements and are subject to no responsible gambling standards. As much as we would like to help these players, there are a higher proportion of claims in this group where our intervention would make no practical difference.

- ADR Transparency and Consistency Failures – Having recently reviewed the websites of all ADRs functioning as part of the MGA licensing system, apart from CasinoReviews.com (as evidenced by this report) no ADR appears to be meeting the regulatory required standards of publishing annual and biennial reports on the complaints they manage.

A review of the UK ADR system identified a similar issue, with only one of the two highest profile ADRs in that market consistently meeting the requirement to publish reports, whilst the other has not published a report since 2021.

These reports are intended to enforce transparency in the system, build consumer confidence in the sector and ensure consistent practice across the various ADR bodies. ADRs failing to publish reports is substantially detrimental to ensuring the ADR system is viewed as credible and impartial.

More concerningly however, the reports that were available from the UK market evidenced a substantial divergence in how frequently these ADR bodies were ruling in favour of consumers (54% vs 39%). When our own ruling rates are taken into consideration this gap becomes even more substantive (60% vs 39%).

This disparity evidences two major problems with the ADR system in the gambling industry as it currently exists:

i) Lack of consistency of rulings amongst ADR providers – For there to be this substantial a divergence between ADR providers, different ADRs must be applying both regulatory standards and consumer law differently, with similar cases liable to receive different outcomes depending on the ADR that reviews them.

ii) Operator bias – As the regulatory authorities that currently require licensees to provide players with an ADR only require licensees to work with a single ADR, this opens the door to licensees selecting the ADR they work with on the basis of the ADR being more likely to give trader favourable rulings.

Both the lack of consistency and the potential for licensees to put their finger on the scales to undermine the impartiality of the system have the substantive potential to undermine consumer confidence in the fairness of the market.

To address this, the Competent Authorities both can and must engage greater oversight of ADR entities to ensure that regulatory standards are applied consistently and should allow consumers to select from the approved ADRs instead of allowing businesses to make this decision.

These actions will substantially improve both the quality of outcomes within the ADR system and facilitate higher levels of consumer trust in the market.

- Maximum Bet Terms – Max bet terms continue to be a problem representing 18% of all claims that were ruled Found for the Operator and over $35k worth of claims.

Whilst these rulings are technically correct – in each case the player has failed to comply with the terms and conditions of the bonus that they agreed to – this service cannot support the continuance of the circumstances that cause these complaints to arise.

The blunt reality is that these terms can and should be enforced automatically. Other licensing regimes require that these terms are enforced automatically and by allowing this loophole to persist, regulators create a situation where licensees effectively free-roll players, allowing violations to go unchecked where the player loses, but voiding any winning promotional play.

- Self-Exclusions – One of the most frequent type of complaint occurring relates to Responsible Gambling policies and specifically the language surrounding the MGA self-exclusion system. Where the majority of the world views a “self-exclusion” as a responsible gambling based account closure, within the MGA system a self-exclusion is not always considered to relate to gambling addiction. Under the Malta license players have to actively tell the operator at the time that they self-exclude that they are excluding due to reasons related to addiction before a self-exclusion would be treated as a problem gambling issue.

This is counter intuitive to users who expect that when they self-exclude, they will be recognised at using tools to manage gambling addiction. This is especially significant when the heightened emotional state of a self-excluding player is taken into consideration.

Alongside this, under the MGA licensing regime, a self-exclusion applies only to the url that it is requested at, unless the player has actively instructed the licensee to carry over the self-exclusion, or the player has directly stated that they exclusion is due to gambling addiction. Players naturally expect that where they request a self-exclusion, it will be applied to all properties that the licensee operates.

This type of dispute not only represents a large proportion of the overall case load but is ethically challenging to defend. These are vulnerable players that as an industry we should be working to protect.

- High Risk Activity – Over the last six months we have seen sustained high volumes of high risk activity, specifically originating in one Eastern EU country. There is strong evidence to indicate that there are large numbers of accounts being registered that are being operated by people other than the person identified in the account information and that the name on the account is being used to allow a 3rd party to access welcome incentives that they are not entitled to.

This activity has been observed moving from group to group within the industry, generally targeting one group until such times as they have exhausted the proxy identities being used or the licensee takes steps to limit the value of the promotional incentives being offered. This activity has been observed both at our ADR clients and non-ADR clients, though admittedly our insight into their activity at non-ADR properties is more limited, and has over the time period worked through the better licensed systems and seems to be moving on toward Curacao licensed operators.

We cannot suggest any direct solution to this issue other than licensees restricting this country from receiving promotional incentives or waiting for the attention of the parties who are directing this activity to shift to the unlicensed markets.

- Source of Wealth checks - The increased levels of high risk activity detailed above is resulting in higher levels of enhanced due diligence being engaged, specifically Source of Wealth checks, with the intention being to establish exactly how the account holder came to be the legal owner of the funds put into play.

These checks are resulting in higher levels of frustration for users, but they are also proving very effective in identifying situations where the person named on the account is neither the person operating nor funding the account.

Again we have no direct solution to this particular issue.

Our ADR Official – Duncan Garvie - continues to maintain their membership of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators (CIArb) and has in the last 6 months become a member of both the International Ombuds Association and the International Council for Commercial Arbitration.

Our ADR Official attends quarterly meetings with the GamShield group – a collective of compliance personnel, regulatory representatives and other industry bodies who participate in gaming protection. This ensures that we retain an up-to-date knowledge of the challenges facing the sector and the various approaches being taken to address said challenges.

Our ADR Official maintains a position as a Trustee for the responsible gambling focused charity BetBlocker, a group that support tens of thousands of users on a daily basis. They have daily input to the user support function of the charity. This ensures that our ADR Official has extensive experience engaging with and supporting those experiencing gambling addiction. This creates transferrable experience that is invaluable in the management of responsible gambling related complaints.

Our ADR Official has refreshed their knowledge of the licensing standards in both the Maltese and UK markets as part of ongoing application processes.

Our ADR Official has attended to multiple training courses relating to the review and management of digital document in the last six months. This is a key part of a large proportion of the claims reviewed by this service.

We maintain an open door policy with any other ADR working within the industry and sustain a positive relationship with some of the most significant entities in the field. Most notably we continue to work closely with the Malta Gaming Authority, who are currently still sustaining a notable presence in terms of dispute review, both consulting on open cases where regulatory guidance is appropriate and offering feedback where our input is sought on other complaints the regulator is reviewing.

We have found the Consumer Affairs Council’s biannual meetings with all ADRs to be a constructive and useful forum.

We have built an entirely new complaint management platform on CasinoReviews.com. Over the coming year we will continue to improve and develop this system to ensure that players have as smooth an experience as possible.

Over the next year it is our intention to hire additional staff to train as ADR Officials.