Aussie online sports book surrenders UK licence

The news this week that Australian online sports betting company Canbet has surrended its UK Gambling Commission licence has sparked speculation that the directors took this action to avoid the indignity of have the licence pulled by the Commission.

The Canbet story is a long and unhappy one for players, with allegations that the company is unable to meet its payment obligations of around $2 million and has closed its doors, leaving a reportedly large number of punters across the world out of pocket due insufficient protection of player funds.

The apparent failure followed a depressingly familiar pattern starting late last year – the company initially cited software problems as the cause for its slow and no pay practice. Then communications were ignored, and soon players were accusing the company of bad and dishonest conduct, and lodging complaints with the UK Gambling Commission, where the company was licensed.

Other tried to resort to parent company Interactive Gaming and Sports Group in Melbourne, but these did not meet with success.

In January this year (see previous reports), Canmbet director Peter Lord told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that the company was working on a solution to pay its gamblers, but that too appeared to fail.

Fast forward to mid-April, and the UK Gambling Commission was still grappling with the problem. The regulator announced that Canbet had failed to raise additional funding and was therefore obliged to consider a sell-off of assets in order to pay a growing list of creditors.

On May 7 the Commission announced that Canbet had handed in its licence….but the fate of the company, its parent and its players is not yet clear.

Canbet management has additionally been accused of taking unauthorised wagers on a range of sports including horse racing, across three states in Australia, with Racing Victoria and Racing Queensland confirming that the company was not approved to place bets on racing in their states.

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