Sky Betting & Gaming is a

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...

-based

gambling Gambling (also known as betting or gaming) is the wagering of something of value ("the stakes") on a random event with the intent of winning something else of value, where instances of strategy are discounted. Gambling thus requires three ele ...

company, owned by

Flutter Entertainment Flutter Entertainment plc (formerly Paddy Power Betfair plc) is an Irish gambling holding company created by the merger of Paddy Power and Betfair, and the later acquisition of The Stars Group. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange, and i ...

, with headquarters in

Leeds Leeds () is a city and the administrative centre of the City of Leeds district in West Yorkshire, England. It is built around the River Aire and is in the eastern foothills of the Pennines. It is also the third-largest settlement (by popul ...

West Yorkshire West Yorkshire is a metropolitan and ceremonial county in the Yorkshire and Humber Region of England. It is an inland and upland county having eastward-draining valleys while taking in the moors of the Pennines. West Yorkshire came into exi ...

and offices in

Sheffield Sheffield is a city in South Yorkshire, England, whose name derives from the River Sheaf which runs through it. The city serves as the administrative centre of the City of Sheffield. It is historically part of the West Riding of Yorkshire ...

& Solihull. Sky Betting & Gaming consists of five core brands: Sky Bet, Sky Vegas, Sky Casino, Sky Poker and Sky Bingo. Sky Betting & Gaming also operates popular, free-to-enter football prediction game Soccer Saturday Super 6. In 2015,

Sky plc Sky Group Limited is a British media and telecommunications conglomerate, which is a division of Comcast, and headquartered in London. It has operations in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Italy. Sky is Europe's ...

sold an 80 percent stake in the company to

CVC Capital Partners CVC Capital Partners is a Luxembourg-based French private equity and investment advisory firm with approximately US$133 billion of assets under management and approximately €157 billion in secured commitments since inception across American, Eu ...

for £600 million, with Sky retaining a 20% stake in the company and agreeing to a long-term licence of the Sky brand. In 2018, CVC and Sky (then in the process of being acquired by

Comcast Comcast Corporation (formerly known as American Cable Systems and Comcast Holdings),Before the AT&T merger in 2001, the parent company was Comcast Holdings Corporation. Comcast Holdings Corporation now refers to a subsidiary of Comcast Corpora ...

) agreed to sell Sky Betting & Gaming to

The Stars Group The Stars Group Inc. (formerly known as Amaya Inc., Amaya Gaming Group Inc. and Rational Group) was a Canadian gaming and online gambling company headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Its shares were traded on Nasdaq and the Toronto Stoc ...

for £3.4 billion, which was then acquired by Flutter Entertainment in 2020. Flutter continues to use the Sky name and logo, which are now owned by Comcast.

Sky Bet

Sky Bet is the

sports betting Sports betting is the activity of predicting sports results and placing a wager on the outcome. The frequency of sports bet upon varies by culture, with the vast majority of bets being placed on association football, American football, basket ...

division of Sky Betting & Gaming, with the majority of its operations run from Leeds.

History

Sky Bet's origins lie in BSkyB's acquisition of Sports Internet Group in July 2000 which included the small telephone and online sports betting based company Surrey Sports, alongside two other companies: Planet Football and Opta Index. Surrey Sports was rebranded in July 2002 to create Sky Bet. The company grew in December 2006 when established online betting companies totalbet and ukbetting were consolidated into Sky Bet after BSkyB's purchase of

365 Media Group 365 Media Group is a now dormant sports media company that once employed over 100 people in Leeds, England and Cape Town, South Africa. Between 2001 and October 2006, the company was known as and grew through the acquisition of a number of bus ...

Sky Vegas

Sky Vegas is the company's primary

online casino Online casinos, also known as virtual casinos or Internet casinos, are online versions of traditional ("brick and mortar") casinos. Online casinos enable gamblers to play and wager on casino games through the Internet. It is a prolific form of ...

division. Sky Vegas is licensed and regulated by the Alderney Gambling Control Commission (AGCC) ( GCB). Until 12 April 2011, Sky Vegas had a dedicated TV channel of the same name on Sky channel 864 (which was formerly called 'Sky Vegas Live'), when it was rebranded for Sky Bet.

History

'Sky Bet Vegas' was created in March 2003, initially with only 3 fixed odds casino-style games called 'Juicy Jackpot', 'Top Spin' and 'Super Keno'.

Fines and regulatory sanctions

On 9 March 2022 the United Kingdom Gambling Commission (

UKGC The Gambling Commission is an executive non-departmental public body of the Government of the United Kingdom responsible for regulating gambling and supervising gaming law in Great Britain. Its remit covers arcades, betting, bingo, casinos, ...

) fined Bonne Terre Limited, trading as Sky Betting and Gaming, £1.17m for breaching the Social Responsibility Code of Practice (SRCP 3.5.3(2) and SRCP 5.1.11) and a licensing condition according to section 82(1) of the Gambling Act 2005. The regulator carried out an investigation that found that on 2 November 2021, the operator sent out a promotional email for its Sky Vegas brand to 41,395 players who had self-excluded and 249,159 customers who had opted out of email marketing. The Commission notes that the licensee took immediate remedial reaction and that they had cooperated throughout the investigation.

Notes

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Sky Betting and Gaming The Stars Group Online gambling companies of the United Kingdom Online poker companies Sky Group CVC Capital Partners companies