Flutter plans to cap monthly betting at €500 for under 25s

Paddy Power owner to launch new limit for young gamblers

Debit cards or cash over the counter in a retail outlet are now the only ways to lay bets at many bookies

Sean Pollock Email

September 05 2021 02:30 AM

Flutter, the Dublin-headquartered betting group and owner of Paddy Power, is to launch a cap on monthly betting expenditure for younger customers.

A €500 per month net deposit limit will be introduced for all punters under the age of 25. Flutter plans to launch this by the end of this year or early 2022.

It adds to other recent customer protection measures by Flutter, including a ban on the use of credit cards online or in shops.

Such moves from Flutter and others in the betting sector come against a background of increasing gambling regulation.

The long-awaited Gambling Regulations Bill will go to Cabinet in September. Among the measures will be a mandatory code of conduct for the industry.

Conor Grant, CEO of Flutter UK and Ireland, claimed safer gambling had been high on the company’s agenda for several years. “Safer gambling is at the heart of what we are trying to do, and one important element of that is supporting our younger customers across all our brands,” he said.

The new policy will be implemented for all customers under the age of 25 across Paddy Power, Betfair and Sky Betting & Gaming, preventing any customer in this age group from spending beyond the €500 limit.

The deposit backstop is part of Flutter’s ‘affordability triple step’ – a risk-based framework that uses real-time data to monitor player activity and behaviours.

Flutter is also introducing the deposit measure in the UK where the cap will be £500 per month.

Grant said Flutter reviewed 3.2 million accounts across the UK and Ireland from a safer gambling perspective. It acted on 70,000 of these accounts.

Grant said younger people were at a higher risk of gambling disorder. He added Flutter’s affordability framework as well as other measures had helped protect the age cohort, but this new measure would act as a “backstop”.

He said the backstop would be required for a small number of customers in the relevant age cohort, with Flutter’s analysis in the UK suggesting it would be needed for around 5pc.

Last week, the Irish Bookmakers Association announced an updated code of practice for safer gambling and spoke of working with the proposed regulator on new measures.

When asked why Flutter was introducing the measure now, Grant said: “As an industry, we haven’t always put our best foot forward. We need to do more.

“We want to improve standards. This is a process for us to introduce more measures, and we are trialling more things in the background.”

Grant said Flutter would welcome regulation, adding it would work with Government to share evidence.

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