The operator of FDJ United’s Unibet brand in the UK has been charged by the UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) for social responsibility and AML licensing failures.

Platinum Gaming has received a warning, needs to pay the Commission £10m, and will have to undergo a third party audit to ensure it meets policies, procedures and controls.

Penalties and enforcement actions rarely reflect well on the companies involved, but this may be particularly bad PR for Unibet, which maintains its targets of one day achieving 0% revenue from gambling harm.

This is also the second time the London-headquartered firm, which operates FDJ’s Unibet under a white label deal as well as the bingo and online casino site UK.Bingo.com, has been hit with a regulator penalty.

The UKGC charged the firm £2.9m back in 2023, also for social responsibility and AML failures. 2022 and 2023 were particularly active years for the Commission with countless fines issued ranging from hundreds of thousands to tens of millions of British pounds.

Various operators received penalties for similar infractions during this time, with records broken via penalties against Entain and William Hill. The regulator itself has noted a slowdown in breaches in 2025, however.

“While industry wide progress has been made in reducing unchecked high spending, the failings at Platinum Gaming are particularly disappointing,” said John Pierce, Commission Director of Enforcement

“The case revealed serious shortcomings in customer interaction systems, including failures to identify and act on clear markers of harm.”

What not to do

The incidents at Platinum will be familiar to many. The Commission found cases of Unibet and/or Bingo.com customers losing ‘thousands within hours or days of registration’ without intervention, according to Pierce.

Specific examples highlighted included the customer interaction system failing to identify a player who lost £5,000 within 24 hours of registration as being at risk of harm. Another customer was not interacted with despite losing £31,000 within nine months.

On AML, the Commission determined that Platinum Gaming’s money laundering and terrorist financing risk assessment did not factor in accounts closed due to AML or counter-terrorist financing (CTF) concerns prior to 2023.

The regulator further asserted that Platinum Gaming’s AML policy lacked clarity around customer due diligence and did not consider high risk occupations, high levels of transactions and high loss levels.

“Customer reviews did not consistently consider high-risk factors, despite these being outlined in the licensee’s own framework,” said Pierce.

Not great for Net Zero

Unibet launched its 0% mission back in 2021. At the time it was part of the Kindred Group – itself having previously been called the Unibet group – alongside the 32Red online casino brand.

Both became part of French state-owned betting group  La Française des Jeux (FDJ) in October 2024 when the French National Lottery operator bought Stockholm-based Kindred for €2.45bn (£2.06bn/$2.70bn). FDJ subsequently rebranded itself as FDJ United.

The net zero campaign saw Kindred and its brands commit to achieving 0% of its revenue from harmful gambling. Kindred gave quarterly updates on its net zero progress with the figure routinely hovering around 3%, though it did fall below this for the first time in Q3 2024.

Post-FDJ acquisition, Unibet and 32Red’s new owner has incorporated the net zero campaign into its own responsible gaming strategy. A regulatory penalty issued to the firm’s UK operator is not exactly a good look for this, however.

The penalty also comes at a time when FDJ United’s expansion into international betting via the Kindred takeover continues to hit hurdles, with the firm struggling to find revenue growth in Q3 while also feeling its bottom line bit by tax hikes in France and elsewhere.