Bet-at-home calls exit from UK market

Bet-at-home was put on notice on July 6 after the United Kingdom Gambling Commission said that the company will no longer accept bets and that all users who wished to withdraw their funds must be allowed to do so while a review of the brand was underway.

The UKGC was outlining the terms of license suspension which the regulator had just handed down to the brand. Following a week of silence, bet-at-home has sent a message to users that the website is officially and permanently withdrawing from the market.

This exit is fairly unexpected, as the regulator had given the operator assurances that based on the outcome of its review of the company, it may restore its license altogether. However, bet-at-home seems disinclined to wait.

As a result, bet-at-home would not use the opportunity to continue businessoperations in the UK. A statement published on the official website confirmed that the company had surrendered its license to the UK Gambling Commission.

Bet-at-home may have suspected the original suspension as it managed to cut its GB Affiliate program before the move was announced by the regulator. Moving forward, though, the company will allow consumers to withdraw any remaining funds through September 30. Following that date, any consumer who has not withdrawn their funds would instead have to contact the company to have their funds restored manually.

Bet-at-home has offered assurances that the company will process those requests through June 30, 2023. Should any funds remain unclaimed after this period, the company will instead move to transfer them to GambleAware, a non-for-profit charity that focuses on preventing, treating, and minimizing gambling-related harm.

Bet-at-home has not had it easy. At the beginning of the year, the company had to suspend operations in its Maltese branch following the company’s loss of its Austrian operations. This event at the time led to the laying off of 65 team members.

The loss of the Austrian branch similarly forced the company to reevaluate its financial results in 2021, leading to the events of January this year. Before that, bet-at-home was impacted by the company’s exit from the German market in anticipation of sweeping betting reforms.

Bet-at-home now needs to rebalance and consider how to proceed, but the company’s prompt response to the developments in the UK market signal that the firm may be already looking for a plan to balance out the bad spell it has been going through.

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