Camelot fined £3.15m for mobile app failures

The Gambling Commission has imposed a financial penalty of £3.15 million on National Lottery operator Camelot for failures linked to its mobile app.

The fine will be paid to good causes.

The decision follows a Commission investigation into three failures which it said negatively impacted consumers.

The first failure related to the National Lottery mobile app informing up to 20,000 players that their winning draw-based ticket was a non-winner when they scanned the ticket with the device’s QR scanner between November 2016 to September 2020.

The second failure involved 22,210 players who purchased a single draw-based ticket through the app being charged for and receiving two tickets. All of those players have been identified and either refunded for the duplicated wager or where duplicate wagers were winners, these were honoured as such on a duplicate basis.

The third failure related to the app sending out marketing messages to app users who had either self-excluded through Gamstop or had been identified by Camelot as showing signs of gambling harm. While marketing messages were sent out, none of the 65,400 players were subsequently permitted by the app to purchase a National Lottery product.

“We are reassured that Camelot has taken steps to make sure that their National Lottery app is fit for purpose,” Andrew Rhodes, Gambling Commission chief executive, said

“However we must caution Camelot that any failings on their duties will be met with consequences. [The] announcement reinforces that any operator failing to comply with their licence requirements will be investigated by the Commission and we will not hesitate to issue fines if requirements are breached.”