The boundary between licensed bookmakers and the offshore market is less clean than the industry’s public warnings suggest. The Guardian’s Rob Davies reports that Sports Information Services, a gambling-content supplier majority-owned by Ladbrokes, William Hill and Betfred owner Fred Done, signed a revenue-sharing contract with the Santeda online-casino network in 2022.
The contract emerged in the Casino Secrets leak from Curaçao’s gambling regulator. It gave Santeda sites access to SIS horse racing, greyhound and esports content, along with data used to settle bets. SIS was paid a percentage of revenue from customers’ losing bets, rather than a flat licensing fee. That made the supplier’s return rise with the losses generated on the network.
Santeda does not have permission to operate in the UK or US and has been fined for unlicensed operation in Spain. Earlier Guardian reporting found that sites in its network were targeting British customers, including people searching for ways around GAMSTOP, the UK’s self-exclusion system. The SIS contract prohibited use of its data in the UK, but the leaked material indicates that SIS supplied multiple Santeda sites implicated in that reporting.
The bookmaker shareholders say they did not know about the arrangement. Industry sources told the Guardian that controls intended to protect commercially sensitive information kept them from seeing SIS customer contracts. Entain, Ladbrokes’ owner, said it was not involved in SIS’s commercial decisions and raised concerns after learning of the relationship. SIS said customers must use its products only where licensed and that it can suspend or terminate contracts when terms are breached.
Those distinctions matter, but so does the financial link. SIS shareholders received at least £37 million in dividends after the Santeda agreement was signed, according to Companies House filings cited by the Guardian. The reporting does not establish how much of that money came from Santeda, whether the contract remains active or that the bookmaker shareholders approved it.
What it does establish is a supply-chain problem. Licensed operators invoke offshore casinos when arguing against higher taxes or tighter regulation, while a company they control sold essential betting infrastructure to one of those networks and earned more when its customers lost. The cost lands first on people reached outside domestic licensing and self-exclusion protections; the revenue can still travel back into the regulated industry through ownership and dividends.