GambleAware has revealed that William Hill donated over half of its £1.04m pledge for 2020/21, over the first three quarters of 2020.
Publishing its industry donation figure for April 1 to December 30, 2020, the independent charity revealed that William Hill donated £540,000 of its pledge with Flutter Entertainment second, donating £874,000.
All UK licence holders are obliged to donate 0.1 per cent of their annual Gross Gambling Yield directly to GambleAware. Those companies with an annual gross gambling revenue of less than £250,000 per annum are requested to donate a minimum of £250.
For the Q1-Q3 trading period as a whole, GambleAware received a total of £4.46m in voluntary donations from the gambling industry – a figure which does not include regulatory settlements or additional donations.
Other leading operators which have donated substantial sums include bet365 at £763,000, Gamesys at £450,000 and Petfre (Gibraltar) – the owner of Betfred – at £75,421, made in two separate donations.
Additional donations, in the form of unclaimed winnings and credit from dormant accounts, were also received, with the two largest donors named as LeoVegas at £94,328, and A&S Leisure Group, owner of Napoleons Casinos, at £10,000.
GambleAware further revealed that a total of £5.03m had been raised by 20 different operators, suppliers and media companies.
Betting companies, such as Entain, Flutter, the Stars Group and William Hill, raised £3.94m, while £1.08m was raised by media firms, led by Sky, ITV and Facebook.
During the period from April to December, GambleAware also received £8.8m in regulatory settlements from William Hill and Betway.
William Hill’s Mr Green division was penalised as part of the Gambling Commission’s targeted investigation into online casinos, with the commission imposing a £3m penalty after the operator ‘failed to have effective procedures aimed at preventing harm and money laundering’.
Meanwhile, Betway was ordered to pay £5.8m ‘in lieu of a financial penalty which will be directed towards delivering the ‘National Strategy to Reduce Gambling Harms’.
For GambleAware’s full list of donors, click here.
