Three UK bookmakers that have repeatedly warned of the dangers of the illicit market have also benefited from a lucrative deal with one of the world’s largest offshore casinos, the Guardian can reveal. Details of the arrangement emerged as a result of last week’s Casino Secrets leak, which saw the release of thousands of confidential files held by the gambling regulator on the Caribbean island of Curaçao, a haven for offshore betting sites. One leaked file concerns the Santeda online casino network, which has been accused of illegally targeting vulnerable gamblers in the UK and has been fined in Spain for operating without a licence.
The file shows that Santeda signed a deal in 2022 with Sports Information Services (SIS) – a UK-based gambling content provider part-owned by Ladbrokes, William Hill and Fred Done, the billionaire owner of Betfred. The three bookmakers have repeatedly warned the government that excessive regulation or taxation could drive their customers into the arms of rogue offshore casinos with no licence to operate in Britain. According to the leak, all three have also benefited from a share of tens of millions of pounds in dividends paid out by SIS after it signed the contract with Santeda.
The companies are understood to have been unaware of the deal at the time it was signed. Matt Zarb-Cousin, a prominent gambling reform campaigner, advised them to get their “house in order”. The bookmakers collectively own more than 50% of SIS, which supplies gambling sites with live horse racing, greyhound and esports content, as well as data used to settle bets with customers.
The use of such data is critical to online betting companies, helping them serve customers and process their bets. The leaked contract shows that SIS also agreed to provide Santeda websites with these services for two years, under a contract that auto-renewed unless either side opted to terminate it. Under the terms of the deal, SIS received a percentage of revenues from losing bets placed via Santeda’s brands.
It is not clear whether the contract is still active, or how much SIS earned from it. SIS declined to say whether the deal had been terminated. Industry sources said that Ladbrokes, William Hill and Fred Done could not have known about the deal with Santeda, owing to controls designed to prevent them accessing commercially-sensitive information about industry rivals.
One source said the companies were “furious” with SIS for doing business with Santeda, at a time when licensed operators were stepping up their warnings about the illicit market. Entain said it was “not a party to the commercial or customer arrangements SIS decides to strike. Now that this relationship has come to light, we take it very seriously and have raised our concerns to SIS”.
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