Detailed information requirements for customer facing businesses
B2C businesses need to tell us about any market where they get 3% or more of their total revenue from players or, in the case of gambling businesses with total revenue of less than £5m per annum, any markets they are targeting where the revenue is more than 10% of their total revenue. The percentage applies to the entity seeking a licence.
For each of these markets, we ask why you think provision of gambling facilities is not illegal, either because you are licensed to operate in that jurisdiction or because you have satisfied yourself that it is not illegal for you to provide gambling facilities to those players.
If your business is relying on legal advice as part of evidence of responsible due diligence we will expect you to tell us who you have been advised by – we will not necessarily expect to see legal opinions, but we will want to understand the legal rationale.
In line with our aim to ensure probity and responsible behaviour we also want you to tell us about any additional markets (those with less than 3% or 10% revenue as appropriate) you are actively targeting in order to grow your business.
By actively targeting we mean, for example:
- the home page is directed towards a jurisdiction and is in that jurisdiction’s language
- that jurisdiction’s currency can be chosen
- payment methods available include those only available in that jurisdiction
- the homepage has a customer service for that jurisdiction
- available material is aimed at particular countries.
This tells us about any deliberate/active marketing to jurisdictions where it might be illegal to supply into the country or for the player to use the services not covered by the 3%/10% requirement.
As previously mentioned, for licensing we are not asking, as a matter of course, B2C operators to give us any information about markets which they are not actively targeting and which provide less than 3%/10% thresholds.
However, we would expect a responsible operator to assess the consequences of their continuing to receive a noticeable stream of income from any jurisdiction where there are real doubts about the legality of their providing gambling services to its population.
We would not expect you to continue to supply those services without considering the applicability and enforceability of such laws to both your business and the player. Where no justifiable arguments exist to continue with such activities, we would expect you to make reasonable attempts to stop such access.
Clearly in such circumstances if you do not take reasonable steps to stop such access it may reflect on your integrity and therefore continuing suitability. We accept there will always be some players who deliberately flout domestic legislation but we expect responsible operators to take reasonable steps to discourage this.
The key for us, whether or not levels of business fall below the thresholds or an operator is actively targeting growth in that market, is that due care is undertaken.
We expect you to have a reasonably coherent rationale for what you are doing. You are expected to keep the licensing objectives in mind when making business decisions. It will not be acceptable to hide behind wilful ignorance or implausible assumptions or arguments at the application stage or subsequently, but at application stage we will only seek the assurances and information detailed above, unless of course, the responses raise concerns which need following up.
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Business to business operators
Last updated: 12 March 2021
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