GambleAware Receives £10.6 Million in Donations, with Entain & bet365 Topping The Donators List

The majority of donations and pledges coming from the UK’s Big Four Gambling Firms.
GambleAware Receives £10.6 Million in Donations, with Entain & bet365 Topping The Donators List
By
November 09, 2021

GambleAware has released the numbers for the first half of the financial year, with the overall donations and pledges totaling £10.6 Million between April and September 2021.

The donations all came from major iGaming operators, who donate and pledge money to the cause in the hopes of playing a part in the reduction of problem gambling, a cause GambleAware has been dedicated to for a number of years.

The biggest donator for the first half of 2021 has been bet365, the British sportsbook, who gave away a total of £4.2 Million in donations to the cause.

Other big donators included Entain who donated £2 Million and William Hill who contributed £1 Million. These three donors alone made up for 90% of the overall donations given to the organization in H1 of 2021.

On top of these donations, GambleAware also disclosed its Safer Gambling RET pledges for the same period, which totaled £2.6 Millions, £2 Million of which came from Entain, with another £450,000 coming from Camelot UK, a major National Lottery operator.

While these big donations account for the majority of GambleAware’s overall money influx, other operators and organizations have also been helping out with their contributions, bringing the total number up to £10.6 for the period.

Who Else is Contributing?

While gambling operators in the UK are under no obligation to GambleAware, all licensed entities are asked to volunteer 0.1% of their gross gambling yield to the cause. Those who gross less than £250,000 per year are asked to volunteer at least £250.

Most operators do honor this commitment, while the UK’s top four firms have pledged to increase the donations to 1% of their GGY by 2023*. This resulted in the donations for 2020 soaring to £19 Million, a trend that looks to be broken this year.

The Big Four include bet365, Entain Plc, Flutter Entertainment, and William Hill, and their promised donations to the RET mean that GambleAware should be receiving substantial donations to fund their operations for the foreseeable future.

For many years now, GambleAware has been the central organization in UK’s battle against problem gambling and propagation of responsible gambling. The charity gives away a big part of all the donations it receives to other related causes, funding the likes of National Gambling Treatment Service, Annual Great Britain Treatment & Support Survey, Gambling Education Hub, and other prevention and awareness campaigns across the country.

“GambleAware has a robust, independent and accountable system of governance process and procedures in place.” GambleAware’s statement concluded.

“These assurances are in place to ensure the gambling industry has no influence over the charity’s commissioning decisions.”

The numbers for the first half of the fiscal year are very encouraging and show that the organization may be set to improve on the numbers from 2020, which would mean they are able to fund even more programs and hopefully help more of those who have fallen into the traps of addictive gambling behavior.

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