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  3. Misuse of inside information: Policy position paper

Policy

Misuse of inside information: Policy position paper

This document sets out the Gambling Commission’s approach to dealing with potential incidents of misuse of inside information in betting (June 2025).

Published
16 December 2025

Last updated
16 December 2025 - Changes

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Contents

Key points relating to betting operators

Betting operators should continue to disrupt and address the misuse of inside information through use of their alerts and controls and provide relevant information to Sports Governing Bodies (SGBs) or the Gambling Commission in compliance with licence condition 15.13.

Coordinated betting by groups of individuals is seen as a commercial matter for betting operators to address as part of their overall risk management strategy. Betting operators have various mechanisms for reducing the risk of coordinated betting, such as restricting bets or liabilities.

Betting operators should have sufficient procedures in place to prevent their staff from misusing inside information gained in their business role for personal financial gain. This is particularly relevant to staff in the trading function4.

Betting operators should also ensure they have policies and procedures in place that prevents employees misusing information, gained through their business role for commercial advantage to the business, which would be unfair to or would disadvantage their consumers. An example of misusing information for commercial advantage to the business would be deliberately shortening the odds of known or likely non-runners in order to maximise Rule 4 deductions.

It is recommended that betting operators include misuse of inside information within their education and training programmes.

Betting operators should ensure their terms and conditions for both bettors and employees clearly explain the rules relating to the misuse of information by which they must comply.

References

3 Operators offering services to the British consumers must comply with the Licence Conditions and Code of Practice (LCCP). Section 15.1 of the LCCP requires operators to report suspicious offences to the Commission. This includes instances that causes them to know or suspect that there has been interference or attempted interference with an event on which bets have been or are likely to be or to have been placed.

4 Ordinary Code 7.1.3 of LCCP states Licensees should have employment policies that:

  • require employees to report any indicators of irregular and/or suspicious betting to their employer; and
  • prohibit their employees from using information related to irregular and/or suspicious betting for the purpose of placing their own wagers, either with their employer or with other operators.
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