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In December 2025, a UK Court of Appeal dismissed an appeal from a consumer who sought to overturn a decision that gambling operators do not owe a duty of care to customers. 2009 and 2019, Lee Gibson lost nearly £1.5 million with Betfair and lodged a claim to recover those losses. But those claims were dismissed and it was ruled that Betfair was not negligent and did not owe Gibson duty of care. It's a landmark case, and today on iGaming Daily we assess just what this ruling means for operators and consumers moving forward. So welcome back to iGaming Daily, supported by OptiMove, the creator of positionless marketing and the number one player engagement platform for sports betting and iGaming operators. Learn how OptiMove's positionless marketing is changing how iGaming teams operate. Discover how operators are using OptiMove's positionless marketing platform. to launch personalised CRM campaigns, dynamically change casino lobbies and bet slips, and create engaging gamified experiences. You can learn more at Optomove.com. I'm Charlie Horner and today I'm joined by SBC Media's editor-at-large, Ted Menmure, and by Tamzin Blow, a partner at CMS Law and a member of the IMGL group of gaming lawyers. Tamzin, thank you so much for taking the time out. How are you doing today? I'm very well, thanks Charlie, it's a pleasure to join you. Brilliant, and Ted, thanks for joining us always, how's things? Good, three days in a row. You're on overtime, Ted, you're on overtime. Brilliant, well, Tamsin, we'll start with you. It is a landmark case and it's one that could have significant ramifications for the industry. What are the unique circumstances of this case and its ruling? Well, in a sense, it's not unique at all in that... Here we have a player who's lost money through a betting exchange and they'd like to get that money back. They don't want to suffer the losses from that gambling. It was alleged by the individual that they were a problem gambler and that the exchange either did know or should have known that they were a problem gambler and should have stopped playing. Now that's a familiar circumstance in some ways. It is a unique set of facts and the decision of the court was based on the facts themselves, albeit that there were important legal principles that they addressed. But fundamentally, the High Court's decision was on the basis that it would respect the factual situation. That was the decision that was reached by the lower court judge. so what legal basis was the claimant seeking compensation. You say it was based on the facts given, but what basis did Gibson give his appeal to recover those losses? he used a number of alternative approaches, the first of which was to say that he had a contractual entitlement. He said that there was an implied term in the contract that he entered into with Bet Frere. that they would operate in accordance with the terms of their licence and he said that they hadn't operated in accordance with the licence conditions and codes of practice, breach of contract which entitled him to damages. He also said that he had a negligence claim, that's a claim in tort and that means establishing three parts. Firstly that there was a duty on Betfrair, that they were in breach of that duty and that that breach caused his loss. And he said that the relationship between him and the exchange was such that it did impose that duty on him to take care to avoid or prevent his gambling losses. Now, that is an incredibly high hurdle as was set out in the Calvert decision that was the previous Court of Appeal decision in this area. And it was said in that decision that establishing that there would be a duty of care for gambling operators was really a journey to outermost reaches of the taut of negligence and to the realm of the truly exceptional. Mr Gibson sought to say that in these circumstances he did get there because they should have known that he was such a player because he said they were on notice that he had a gambling problem and therefore was a breach and that caused his loss. And finally, he said that the contracts in fact, even if you disregard the previous two, should be void. There were individual contracts entered into and they should be voided because by being in breach of the terms of their licence, there was an illegality and that enables you to void the contracts and a right to restitution arises. uh 10 year period between 2009 and 2019. We talk a lot about operators and player protection when it comes to regulation. Is it realistic that an operator could pick up signs of the problem gambling over a 10 year period in your viewings from some of the reporting that we've done on this? Ooh, look, I'm quite, you know, I really don't know what to think about this case because as you said, it covers a long period and then the other thing is that the losses are substantial. at 1.5 million. My question here to Tamsen would be, in the way this lawsuit was filed, is there any kind of nuance or anything unique that you've ever seen presented to the courts by Mr Gibson in his claim? That would distinguish it in order for him to be able to succeed on his claim. he didn't fundamentally, he wasn't able to get the court to the point where they said that this is such a severe case that we consider that the operator should have known that you had a problem here. may be circumstances in which that is possible but what the court has done first in Calvert before the Court of Appeal and now by the High Court Judge and reiterated by the Court of Appeal is say that that threshold is a high one. There is no assumption of a duty of care between operator and customer. You would really need to present a very particular set of facts in order to be able to establish that duty of care. But even once you have established that, doesn't mean that you get home uh on a negligence case. That doesn't mean that you're necessarily going to be successful. We didn't get there in this case, but in the Calvert case, you did see that whilst they might have got over the hurdle when it came to actually positively having put the um operator on notice that they were a problem gambler, there was still a failure of causation because the court said they could have gone elsewhere in order to to play. we don't have any authority from um the court of circumstances in which an individual would be able to get over all of the requirements for negligence in order to be able to make a claim against an operator in terms of losses. just before we dive more into some of the ramifications, we should probably clarify that the breach of contract includes the the license conditions and the codes of practice. Tamsin, this is something that seemed quite broad. What are the specific determinations related to the license conditions, oh what an operator has to do to fulfil its license versus the license practices and those aspects which are conditional? eh The license conditions and codes of practice are broken down into things which are conditions and therefore a breach of them is a breach of the license of your regulatory obligations and that's different to the civil causes of action we're talking about here. But in addition to the conditions as you say, there are codes of practice. There's a slight difficulty in that description because actually Those parts of the codes of practice which are part of the social responsibility code of practice have the same weight as a condition. So you have to comply with the obligations there, otherwise you are in breach and sanctions may follow from that. And important conditions around, for example, customer interaction fall within the social responsibility code of practice. Other parts of the code of practice are considered part of the ordinary code and those do not have the standing of conditions and rather they set out good practice. You can adopt alternative approaches as an operator but you do have to have actively taken account of the ordinary code provision so they still set out some pretty good principles to take account of. they can still be relevant in terms of evidence of your compliance for those purposes. before we go to a quick break, we'll look at the decision itself because Gibson's claim wasn't upheld. It failed on ground one, essentially the first stage. so that appeal was rejected that Betfair should have known about its problem gambling. em Essentially, why was this rejected by the court? um when he did present evidence of disorders in his gambling behaviour. So the decision that the Court of Appeal was reaching does not involve them doing a full merits assessment of the facts um before them. What they have to determine and what they did determine is that the High Court judge considered the relevant evidence and didn't make any errors of principle and that the conclusion they reached on the facts was a reasonable one. They don't remake the factual decision in that sense. having looked at it and having looked at the manner in which the High Court Judge approached the evidence before it in terms of what Mr Gibson had said and evidence he had provided, particularly to show that he could afford his level of spend, the conclusion was reached that that basis, Betfair neither knew that he was a problem gambler nor should they have known. So both actual knowledge and constructive knowledge couldn't be found according to the High Court judge and they'd approach that in the right way. Ted, just before we do head off for that break, how would you assess that sort of judgment from the High Court judge? Well, I mean, I can't argue with him. I think it is fair, you know, given the circumstances and given that, you know, he was trying to kind of hide. his addiction from the operator and even in the age of compliance, you you have to kind of build or have a case of evidence to present forward as in where you think kind of that negligence was that he was kind of clearly kind of avoiding in his case with, with Betfair that have to engage with. But I think this is a very interesting case. Fantastic. Well, Tamsin, Ted, we'll take a short break and then we'll come back and we'll talk a little bit about the potential ramifications for this moving forward. Welcome back to iGaming Daily. Today we're having a bit of a deep dive into Betfair's...Betfair's winning court, I think it's fair to say. Tamsin, one of the things that we outlined before was that each bet in Gibson's claim is treated as a separate contract. I was wondering if you could just clear that up and just outline a little bit about what that means and... why that part of the case was dismissed. So he was running a case that actually each bet should be voided because at the time Betfair was acting in breach of its license conditions. Now, it was important for him that each time he placed a bet that should be treated as a separate contract because If it was just one contract, the day that he entered into opening an account, signing up to the terms of use, et cetera, unless he could show that they were in breach right at that stage, then it would be much more difficult to seek to establish his position in terms of the illegality. And so he wanted to do that on an individual basis, going through the relationship. Court of Appeal didn't get that far because it didn't need to consider all of the grounds em in this particular case as a result of that. But in any event, the Court of Appeal did say that the breach of an LCCP provision in and of itself cannot have the effect of rendering the contract void. I think that is actually the really important point of principle to look to here for operators is about the role that the LCCP plays and whether that can be used as the basis on which to void a contract. It's a rather technical bit for uh us litigation lawyers about how you split up the contract. But what's really important for operators is that a court's not simply going to be saying, Right, there's been some minor breach of the LCCP, the entire contract is void as a result of that because that could obviously have extremely wide-ranging consequences for the industry. Yeah, absolutely. Is there any circumstances in which any kind of major breach of LCCP duties would lead to a compensation ruling or a contract being voided? em We don't see the detail of that covered within the decision. And I think it's slightly the wrong way to think about it, to think LCCP breach and therefore civil claim. The civil claims are assessed on a different basis, is what comes out of this judgment. What you can't do is simply say, there's been a breach and therefore that entitles me. rather you have to meet the requirements of your negligence claim, for example, and the test for that is very different to the test for the LCCP because causation particularly is going to be a perennial problem. we're seeing a situation now where operators have somewhat of a line between legal conditions um, between regulatory obligations and what they have to do and then civil legal duties, there seems to be somewhat of a line of distinction between the two. Ted, do you want to come in and follow up on that? One of the things I want to state is, with regards to this case and, you know, any customer dispute or any customer that sees compensation, do you think that players in disputes will turn to the LCCP as a means of like, you know, these could be interpreted as terms and conditions? or contractual elements when they engage in a legal dispute? I'm sure they will continue to try to, but I think that this decision should deter them from doing that. is just not the case that a breach of particular conditions equals a civil claim. And that's quite normal in the regulated sector. If we compare it, for example, to the Online Safety Act, that places various duties on those who are offering user-to-user and search services, but it was very clear when they were putting in place that act, but what it was not intended to do was to give rise to specific new civil claims. And so, in just the same way here, what people have to work with is our existing law which applies not just to gambling operators but more generally in terms of contract and of em negligence m and the courts are going to be reluctant to imply a term that means that the LCCP are written at large into the terms of use such that any breach means there's been a breach of contract. Well, this is undoubtedly a positive for Betfair and the outcome that they would have wanted from this case, but what precedent does this case set for UK gambling operators moving forward when it comes to their responsibilities on player safety? Because we know that operators do have some responsibility, but this, I guess, shifts the goalposts little bit in terms of that duty of care aspect. How would you assess the precedent moving forward, Tamsin? I actually think that it doesn't massively shift the goalposts in the sense that they continue to have their regulatory obligations to comply with and it has not altered the regulatory obligations that operators have. Instead, it has helped to reconfirm the existing line of case law that that does not have a direct read across to civil claims. Then finally from me, and then I'll hand it to Ted for any follow-ups, but what are the takeaways for consumers on this? Because I think as an industry, there's a little bit of hesitance to say that the players should take responsibility for their own safety on these platforms. But does this actually say that, yes, consumers do have to take responsibility for themselves to a certain extent when it comes to safer gambling and protections against problem gambling? uh I think there is obviously a very important role still to be played by the operators in order to interact with their customers particularly. But from a very practical level, if somebody is in a position where they are concerned that they are a problem gambler, then that's something that hopefully together with the operator can be identified. it would be in their best interests to identify positively to the operator that they have concerns around that and to make use of facilities such as Gamstop to the extent they can. That's not to say that it alleviates all of the burden from a regulatory perspective from operators, but what this case does show is that relying on uh gambling problem in order to seek to recoup your losses is going to be and continues to be a challenge before the English courts. there's something that we've talked about a lot when it comes to player safety is how much responsibility is on the operator and on the consumer. How would you assess this? then of course, if you want to ask any follow ups for Tamsin and feel free. You know, as journalists, we always kind of focus more on the context. I want to ask you, operators going through a period of adjustment, the gambling review, now the tax adjustments, uh it's formative over a four or five year period. But what do you feel are kind of the new legal sensitivities for UK gambling licenses, especially with engagement to their customers? I think it's ever evolving. um in terms of uh continually assessing risk and applying the assessment of risk to your procedures and continuing to develop those as we get more information, more data to act upon. I think the most significant changes um in terms of social responsibility have already been put in place but we're continuing to see that working through. m in terms of m the impact that it has. Obviously we had somewhat of a peak from the gambling commission's enforcement in respect of this, but they obviously continue to be active to ensure that em operators are complying with their obligations here. Fantastic. Well, Tamsin, we've really enjoyed having you on the show. Thank you ever so much for taking the time out and if listeners want to take a little bit... more of a look into this case, we'll leave some links in the description for them to take a little bit more of a read of this. But for now, Ted, thanks a lot for joining me, Tamsin Blow, partner at CMS Law and a member of the IMGL group of gaming lawyers. Thank you very much for joining us and to listeners, come back tomorrow to tune into another episode of iGaming Daily to keep up to date with all the latest global gambling news.