UK gambling regulation, affordability and prediction markets, with Mel Ellis

On The Gambling Files, the host is joined by Melanie Ellis, partner at Northridge Law, for a legal read on affordability checks, regulator departures, unlicensed sponsorship and prediction markets. The policy discussion starts about 28 minutes in, after plenty of off-topic chat.

In this episode

• The Gambling Commission is going ahead with financial risk checks in stages, Ellis says; stage one triggers for customers aged 25 and over at £5,000 net deposit in a rolling 24 hours, or £2,500 for under-25s (29:58, 31:13, 31:36).

• At first, she says, the Commission won't act if operators fail to respond properly to results, but later the checks will cover everybody at lower trigger points (30:02, 30:16).

• Her concern: results depend on which credit reference agency you ask, which can produce false positives or false negatives (33:30, 34:07, 34:40).

• She sees a senior Commission departure as natural timing with white paper measures being put into force, and suggests future contracts may need a longer gap before leavers become consultants (40:03, 48:34).

• The proposed ban on unlicensed gambling sponsors would cover all events and venues, not just sport, but online sponsorships would still be possible (51:26, 55:32).

• In the UK, she says, prediction markets are basically a betting exchange, though bets on financial indices would fall under the FCA, which has banned binary bets (58:29, 59:47).

Episode from The Gambling Files (RTFM) by Jon Bruford and Fintan Costello, published on YouTube.