Andrew Rhodes, Chief Executive Officer of the British Lottery Commission, stressed at the International Association of Lottery Regulators meeting in Toronto that the regulator was continuously combating unlicensed lottery activities. He noted that the effectiveness of efforts to block the flow of illegal gambling sites was being assessed through cooperation with search engines.
Andrew Rhodes indicated that “nearly 100,000” links to illegal websites had been reported to search engine service providers this year, bringing the cumulative number of reporting sites to nearly 200,000. “We have been able to quantify the results of our work, and the more than 1,000 illegal operators currently being tracked have effectively made it more difficult for users to access and to operate by removing their content from the search results.” He also confessed to the limited impact of the Facebook platform, but the platform was active in removing illegal lottery messages – – “This is indeed the most prominent issue on the platform.”
“Our focus is on stopping illegal games upstream, and while closing down specific websites, it is more critical to make their operation and access more difficult. At the same time, we are focusing on monitoring B2B game providers in an effort to reduce their attractiveness by cutting off the supply of content in the illicit market.” Andrew Rhodes also commented on the issue of the limitation on the presentation of the lottery account. By analogy, he noted that consumers today expect to know exactly when the funds will arrive, ideally on time. “A few months ago, I purchased watch parts at the Italian station at eBay, and from the beginning of the weekdown on Tuesday morning, I was able to track the condition of the package as a whole: packing, dispatching, receipt of DHL, flight number, real-time flight trajectory until the courier arrived. Modern consumers have the same expectations for all services — once a cashier’s application is submitted, they want to be on the books and keep track of the process, but there is a gap between their actual experience.”
He further disclosed that the regulator ‘ s data from June to September 2024 showed that the British licensed lottery operators had processed a total of 44.2 million cash withdrawal requests. Of these, 96.3 per cent were automated, 3.5 per cent took approximately 34 hours and 0.1 per cent took longer. He indicated that regulators were working to gain insight into the specific reasons behind the small number of delays.
