France’s gaming regulator, the Sanctions Committee of the National Gaming Authority (ANJ), has handed a public sanction of €800,000 to Unibet-owner SPS Betting.
The financial action follows a procedure submitted to the ANJ board which was examined by the regulator in January earlier this year, suggesting that Unibet failed to comply with self-exclusion obligations.
As a result of this examination, the ANJ committee confirmed the breaches of self-exclusion rules and issued the public sanction to reiterate the importance of protecting at-risk players from excessive gambling.
In 2021, Unibet’s French offering on iOS devices experienced a computer malfunction, causing several thousand players that requested self-exclusion to be able to begin gambling again after a few days.
Notably, tt was found that the self-exclusion requests made in months by the players were mistakenly converted into days, with players self-excluding for 12 months only actually being excluded for 12 days.
This malfunction occurred on Unibet’s French offering between 2 March 2021 and 11 December 2022, before being corrected by the operator.
Unfortunately, an update for iOS players caused this malfunction to reoccur, impacting players from December 29, 2022, to February 2, 2023. This led to a total impacted period of 22 months.
In addition to the financial penalty, the operator must also display a box on its Unibet.fr website from 17 March to 31 March 2025, linking to the ANJ press release regarding the sanction.