Crucial Compliance has acquired gambling protection app BetProtect, enabling the latter to expand its reach, offering its solution to ‘several leading providers’.

The acquisition was finalised on 1 August, and will see Crucial Compliance integrate BetConstruct into its wider offering providing corporate responsibility, compliance and professional service solutions.

A compliance specialist consultancy, Crucial Compliance aims to deliver a ‘holistic safer gambling strategy’ specifically designed to meet the needs of betting and gaming operators, including online and land-based firms. The addition of BetConstruct follows on from the bolstering of the company’s strategy through July’s partnership with The Face Recognition Company.

Launched by father and son team David and Adam Bradford in June, following the former’s conviction for stealing from his employer to fund a gambling habit, BetProtect functions as a ‘player awareness space’ providing tools and professional advice to help players manage their betting behaviour.

The app can be incorporated into both mobile and desktop gaming platforms, and has been informed by input from therapists and counsellors, as well as David Bradford’s lived experience of gambling related harm.

“BetProtect’s new home is the perfect place for its features and content to be rolled out across the industry, thanks to the direction and expertise provided by Crucial Compliance’s compliance expertise and technological ability,” said Adam Bradford.

“The model in place is not commercial; it’s built around reinvestment, which means that finance generated is put back into the development of the app, both in terms of improving its effectiveness through analytical analysis and putting it in front of more and more people.”

Prior to its takeover by Crucial Compliance, the BetConstruct brand and products operated as part of the Safer Gambling Group, which will be dissolved following the completion of the acquisition and a short handover period.

Both the Gibraltar-based compliance specialist and the app intend to expand BetConstruct’s reach, and ‘household names from the UK and overseas’ are reportedly interested in incorporating the app as part of their wider player protection offering.

Paul Foster, Crucial Compliance CEO, added: “Equipped with the app, and the knowledge and insight we can gain from David’s lived experiences, we are setting out to change the industry one company at a time, and the acquisition of BetProtect forms another cornerstone of that objective.

“We strongly believe that there is an appetite to do more from within the industry, and a willingness from the leading providers in the UK and from overseas to change the overall mentality of a sector that is trying to acknowledge that the addiction risk is still with us in this digital age.”

He continued: “In the short term, we’re seeking to prevent gambling-related harm and protect players as quickly as possible. In the longer term, I truly believe we can drive real cultural change in the industry, keeping the power of David’s own story front of mind, together with our unique position as an independent compliance consultancy.”