According to a study, Betsafe has been deemed the betting operator with the clearest terms and conditions for sports bettors.
The study, which was constructed for iGamingBusiness by bettingexpert.com, utilised a detailed analysis of 25 bookmakers, outlining which provided guidelines that were the most straightforward to follow for bettors.
It also revealed that when it comes to transparency in terms and conditions, Betsafe was deemed the leading bookmaker for January 2018, with Stan James and Ladbrokes following in second and third respectively.
The study defined transparency on a number of aspects that played a role in the readability of the overall terms and conditions. Additionally, the study raised concerns over how little responsible gambling message was saturated in the documents.
Terms and condition were thrown into the forefront of mainstream industry attention after the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) and the Gambling Commission warned operators would need to take ‘immediate steps’ to comply with consumer protection law or face enforcement action, after a joint investigation.
The CMA emphasised that gambling firms must “stop unfair online promotions that ‘trap players’ money,” with changes now having to be adopted across the sector.
The study stated: “We found very few mentions across the 25 bookmakers in our study, with a number of bookmakers failing to refer to responsible gambling at all.
“While this does not imply these bookmakers do not provide measures and information to assist their customers with managing their gambling, we find it peculiar that a binding agreement between bookmaker and customer would not establish an agreement on responsible gambling measures to be provided to the customer.”
Notwithstanding an underwhelming amount of mentions for responsible gambling across the board, the study touted Marathonbet as the operator that paid closest attention to responsible gambling within its terms and conditions throughout the month.
The importance of terms and conditions to both affiliates and operators has been elevated this month, by Committees of Advertising Practice (CAP) further restricting operators in the free bets and live betting promotions that they are aloud to use. For affiliates it’s increasingly pivotal that they are fully aware of the ever changing terms and conditions, so they don’t breach rules and end up being reprimanded by the ASA, or fined by the Gambling Commission, in the same way that ElectraWorks recently was for breaching advertising rules.
