UKGC fines reach £21.8M in 2025 as Done Brothers and Paddy Power hit with £2.825M in penalties for AML and customer protection failures.
The UK Gambling Commission has imposed an additional £2.825 million in penalties on operators, pushing 2025’s total enforcement fines beyond £21.8 million.
Done Brothers Cash Betting Limited and Paddy Power Betfair join the growing list of operators penalised this year.
The regulator has also secured a criminal conviction against an illegal WhatsApp bookie, demonstrating its multi-pronged enforcement approach. These latest actions follow a string of regulatory interventions that have already resulted in substantial financial consequences for operators failing to meet compliance standards throughout 2025.
Done Brothers Fined £825,000 for Repeat Offences
Done Brothers Cash Betting Limited, operating as Betfred, faces a £825,000 penalty for anti-money-laundering and social-responsibility failures.
The land-based operator’s shortcomings included inadequate monitoring of B3 gaming machines, with systems unable to track overall customer spend effectively. The regulator found that the operator set inappropriately high thresholds at £15,000 losses and £125,000 stakes before triggering enhanced due diligence checks.
This marks the second time Done Brothers has faced enforcement action. The operator previously paid £3.25 million in 2023 for similar breaches, raising questions about whether financial penalties alone drive meaningful change.
Subsequent to the latest fine, the operator must undergo a third-party audit to verify improved anti-money-laundering and safer-gambling controls.
Paddy Power Betfair Penalised £2 Million for Protection Failures
Four remote operators trading under the Paddy Power and Betfair brands will pay £2 million following an investigation into customer protection deficiencies. The Commission identified multiple instances in which systems failed to detect at-risk behaviour, including one customer who deposited £12,000 over 15 days without intervention and another who lost £12,300 over five weeks before being contacted.
Most concerning was a customer who staked £86,000 over 16 days, with intense activity patterns, yet no manual account review occurred until they triggered a loss. Another player gambled for 7 hours and 46 minutes in a single session, placing over 300 bets worth £20,000, but the operator only acted after they exceeded loss limits.
This represents Paddy Power Betfair’s second regulatory action, following a £490,000 fine in 2023 for marketing to vulnerable consumers. Director of Enforcement John Pierce stated that operators cannot rely too heavily on automation and must intervene when clear harm indicators emerge.
Growing Total Reflects Intensified Enforcement
With these latest penalties, UKGC fines have reached £21.825 million in 2025. Earlier in the year, the regulator had already issued over £7.5 million in penalties to various operators for compliance breaches.
The Commission then imposed a record £10 million fine on Platinum Gaming Limited, operator of Unibet, which brought the annual total beyond £19 million before these December enforcement actions.
Casinoplusbonus Opinion
The escalating fines demonstrate the Commission’s determination to enforce compliance, but repeated offences from major operators suggest current penalties may not be sufficient deterrents. For UK players, these enforcement actions should provide some reassurance that operators face serious consequences for failing to protect customers from gambling harm or prevent money laundering.
However, the pattern of repeat offenders raises concerns about whether financial penalties alone can drive cultural change within gambling news businesses. Operators appear to be calculating that the risk of fines remains lower than the cost of implementing robust prevention systems. Meanwhile, players who experience harm while operators fail to intervene receive little direct compensation. The Commission’s multi-faceted approach, combining operator fines with criminal prosecutions of illegal operators, shows it’s attempting to address the problem from multiple angles.
Yet until penalties consistently exceed the financial benefit of non-compliance, and until more directors face personal accountability, the cycle of ‘fine, apologise, repeat’ may continue at the expense of vulnerable players who deserve better protection.
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