Entain sues Oddsmonkey owner alleging intellectual property infringement
The London-listed group has launched legal action against the matched betting provider.
UK. –Entain has lodged a lawsuit against Liquidity Trading Limited alleging intellectual property infringement. The case also lists Entain subsidiaries Ladbrokes Betting and Gaming Limited and 365 Scores UK Limited as plaintiffs.
Liquidity Trading owns Oddsmonkey, which provides matched betting, in which players turn free bets and promotions into withdrawable profit by betting both for and against. The practice is not illegal in Britain, but bookmakers often condemn it as a form of bonus abuse due to how it takes advantage of marketing campaigns. Many bookmakers will suspend player accounts if they detect the practice
No more details have been published about the case, although the defendant is named as Samuel Stoffel, a board member of Liquidity PA and the founder and former CEO of Outplayed, which merged with Liquidity last year.
Oddsmonkey’s website says: “With matched betting in the UK, you can unlock the free bet and protect any money you use to place a bet with. Typically, you will end up with approximately 80% of the free bet amount, so a £30 free bet turns into around £24 profit.”
Gambling Commission probe into account restrictions
Last month, the Gambling Commission announced that it would undertake a review of licensed gambling operators’ application of commercial restrictions on betting accounts, including account suspensions and closures . CEO Andrew Rhodes said the regulator didn’t plan to intervene in the issue of commercial liabilities but wanted more insights into how restrictions are applied in order to ensure fairness and transparency for customers.
Rhodes noted that the practice of bookmakers placing commercial restrictions on customers has been a source of contention between consumers and gambling operators. He revealed that the commission had sent a data request to some of the largest online real-event betting providers earlier this year to collect data on restrictions applied to active customer accounts within the previous calendar year.
This request covered a majority of the market – almost 15 million customer accounts. From a total of 14,923,840 active customer accounts, operators reported 643,779 accounts restricted in some form – a rate of 4.31 per cent. This includes all forms of restrictions, and some accounts will be subject to multiple forms of restriction. The proportion of restricted accounts can vary significantly between operators due to individual risk appetite, operator size and profile of customer base.
